Family battle to keep jailed businessmen out of prison cell

Schabir Shaik's days in a private hospital ward are drawing to an end - even though a psychiatrist has said the Durban businessman sent to prison for 15 years is "a severe suicide risk".

Professor AE Gangat, a Durban psychiatrist, wrote in a letter to the department of correctional services dated February 7 - parts of which were quoted verbatim in the Weekend Witness newspaper yesterday - that Shaik's stay in a private ward in Durban's St Augustine Hospital should be extended.

Today Shaik will have been at St Augustine's for 80 days.

Gangat wrote that this was necessary because Shaik "entertains suicidal thoughts all the time. (Shaik) verbalised his feelings (to me) by stating: 'I believe that I would be better off dead than alive'. He thus poses a severe suicide risk, which can best be monitored in a private hospital, where nursing care is available 24 hours a day and where I can attend to emergency crisis intervention."

Gangat's letter, to Dr N Ndebele of correctional services, was sent with a letter - also quoted in the Weekend Witness - from Shaik's physician, Dr AS Gaffoor.

Gaffoor also argued that his patient should be allowed to stay on at St Augustine's.

Gaffoor wrote: "In view of Shaik's recent very high pressure and new treatment, I feel it is dangerous to transfer him now. I would suggest I monitor Mr Shaik's blood pressure and condition for another 10 days before you transfer him."

He also recommended that if Shaik was then taken back to Qalakabhusha Prison to serve his 15-year sentence, he should be initially admitted to the prison hospital.

"It seems pretty clear what is going on," said a source close to the Shaik camp yesterday.

"Another 10 days is about the best the Shaiks can hope for. But, after that, they definitely don't want Schabir to be sent to, say, Durban Westville but to the prison hospital at Qalakabhusha. This is what they are fighting for. They want to be able to tell Schabir that he's not going to some hellhole."

The source said the doctors as well as the Shaik brothers had had to deal with a "Catch-22 situation" in relation to Schabir.

"On the one hand, his blood pressure would soar, but it could not be brought under control properly because whenever it was stabilised or coming close to stablisation it was not as though Schabir could look forward to a long holiday on the beach where he could recuperate. He had to look forward to going to prison - and of course the blood pressure would soar again."

In the parts from his letter that were published, Gangat seemed to be backing this view of the situation.

"During the period I have attended to (Shaik's) mood disturbance and anxiety state," Gangat wrote, "he has remained as an in-patient at St Augustine's Hospital. His treatment thus far has consisted of … anti-depressants and mood stabilisers. His psychiatric diagnosis is severe depressive disorder plus generalised anxiety disorder."

Gangat went on to say Shaik's "disturbed emotional state" was aggravating his hypertension and he urged Ndebele to bear in mind the kind of treatment Shaik required.

"As a medical practitioner," he wrote, "I am certain that you are well aware of the comprehensive psychiatric treatment that consists not only of psychotropic but also psychotherapeutic interventions, which I am administering. Such psychiatric intervention is not readily available in a correctional centre and it will not be possible for me to render such procedures as I am a busy psychiatrist running a full-time private practice."

Gangat recommended that Shaik remain at the private hospital where all his medical treatment, including treatment from Gaffoor and a neurologist, could be continued.

The correspondence from the doctors was apparently a response to an investigation by correctional services into whether Shaik's condition make it necessary for him to stay on in a private hospital ward instead of in jail.

The department of correctional services has said it will "in due course" send its own specialist to see if it is necessary for Shaik to remain in a private hospital.

With acknowledgment to Jeremy Gordin and Cape Argus.