21 May 2008

 

One signature away from Muzi's transplant
 

Guess who that is on the photo together with Muzi? It's Dr Vusi Magagula, Deputy-Director of Health Services in Swaziland, a.k.a. one of the oblivious Swaziland government officials who experienced some difficulty with authorising little Muzi's kidney transplant. After having received numerous phone calls from media and prominent individuals and waking up several times with Muzi's plight on the front page of the Swazi Observer, Dr Magagula finally figured that the time was right to resolve the situation. Hence his visit to the Johannesburg General Hospital, the hospital that the Swaziland government owes ZAR 300.000+ for the dialysis treatments that Muzi received so far and that needs to facilitate the transplantation.

After some discussions, the situation is as follows:

- The outstanding hospital account will be settled within the next three weeks.
- Dr Magagula made photos of Muzi and acquired the quotes from the hospital. Added to his proposal, these will be forwarded to the Prime Minister of Swaziland - the honourable Absalom Themba Dlamini - who will then officially authorise Muzi's entire transplant procedure to be paid from the Phalala Fund, a fund under the auspices of His Majesty King Mswati III.
- In other words, this means that the work-up of Muzi's mother can start in about July this year and Muzi will receive his transplant in November.
- Marang House will take care of Muzi for at least another year after the transplant and furthermore assist with sourcing additional funding and resources to assist the family when Muzi returns to Swaziland.
- Dr Magagula was so impressed with Marang House that he will consider sending more children from Swaziland to Marang House - wow.

So is this good news? The most important development is that they are taking the situation seriously, which helps. If they keep all their promises this is fantastic news and if they don't then in July we will start making noise again.

Now we must just hope that the xenophobic South Africans have a humanitarian streak in them after all.

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# posted by Pieter Ernst Jr @ 17:48