Lawyer for convicted fraudster's doctors says they did not certify him as being at death's door

Schabir Shaik was not certified terminally ill by doctors at Durban's Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital, and who it was that deemed him to be at death's door - which is necessary to satisfy the legal requirements for medical parole - remains unclear.

"I don't have any information that it was (satisfied), most certainly not by my clients and not by anyone else who was treating Mr Shaik (at the hospital)," said Altus van Rensburg, the lawyer who is acting on behalf of three of the hospital's cardiac doctors against whom a complaint has been levelled by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) on behalf of the Democratic Alliance (DA).

Earlier this month, the DA's James Selfe requested that the council investigate whether the trio - Professor Datshana Prakash Naidoo, who heads the cardiology unit at the hospital, Dr Sajidah Khan and Dr Les Ponnusamy - had broken the rules of good medical conduct when they recommended that Shaik be released on medical parole last September.

Yet Naidoo stated this month that he had personally discharged the patient last November, believing that he was well enough to be returned to prison, although the hospital's management refused to remove him from the premises.

Shaik, the former financial advisor to ANC president Jacob Zuma, was convicted of two counts of corruption and one of fraud and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

He had served just two years and four months of his term by the time he was granted medical parole earlier this month, supposedly so that he could "die a consolatory and dignified death" at his Morningside, Durban, home.

Van Rensberg points out that Ponnusamy was wrongly drawn into the eye of the storm when media reports quoted him as being an ANC member and potentially sympathetic to Shaik's cause.

"He had no more involvement with Mr Shaik than other of the doctors in the unit," the lawyer says.

Naidoo and Khan were co-signatories of a medical report from last September, which has since been released to the media and which recommended that Shaik be granted parole - not because he was terminally ill, however, but because there was little more they could do for him.

"Mr Shaik was a proverbial hot potato," according to Van Rensberg. "It doesn't appear that anyone wanted him," hence his clients' parole recommendation.

"What they (the doctors) said was: 'We can't keep him in the cardiac unit because he doesn't have a heart problem. He might develop one as a result of his condition, his high blood pressure. And then he can come to the cardiac unit and we can treat him there. But we can't keep him in the cardiac unit indefinitely just in case he develops a heart problem. So we say, take him back to Westville Prison. If he's sick, then treat him in the prison hospital. If you don't want to treat him in the prison hospital because the conditions there are not optimal, then make the conditions optimal or just do something, but we can't keep a man here, who currently doesn't have cardiac problem indefinitely just in case he might develop one.'"

Nowhere in the September report did Naidoo or Khan state that their patient was terminally ill.

"I think it's difficult to say how you can be well (enough to be discharged) if you are terminally ill," says Van Rensberg. And at no point since then did either Naidoo or Khan indicate to Correctional Services that Shaik's condition had deteriorated.

In a separate conversation, Naidoo confirmed to The Sunday Independent this week that he had signed the discharge summary when Shaik was released on medical parole on March 3 and he confirmed that it reflected his diagnosis of last September, which was not one of imminent death.

Who it was then that stepped in to satisfy the requirements of Section 79 of the Correctional Services Act remains unclear, as does whether the controversial September report provided the basis for considering medical parole.

"I would be surprised if any practitioner could certify what the section requires," Van Rensberg says. According to the act, "it's got to be the medical practitioner treating that person and I don't have any information that any other practitioner could have given the information."

Yet the morning after Shaik's release, (sic) - which is necessary to satisfy the legal requirements for medical parole - remains unclear Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour told SABC television that three different doctors had independently examined Shaik.

One of them he named as Dr Sipheshile Mbanjwa, to whom Naidoo and Khan had also sent a copy of the September report.

According to the HPCSA database, Mbanjwa has not completed his medical training.

He could not be reached for comment.