The Municipality’s bid to rid the City of bogus doctors and illegal abortions gained considerable momentum recently when a swoop by the City’s Metro Police and the SAPS resulted in the arrest of 10 people implicated in the practice of illegal backstreet abortions.
The Municipality had earlier in the year facilitated a training programme for both Metro Police and the SAPS on tactics to follow in arresting bogus doctors and the arrest of these 10 people is therefore a crucial move in the right path for the Municipality as there has been an intensive bid to pounce on the perpetrators of the illegal practice.
The Deputy City Manager of Health and Social Services, Dr Musa Gumede says the Municipality is very excited that our effort has started to bear fruit.
‘We appeal to the public to continue working with us and to report these illegal doctors and any advertising or carrying out of the practice that they see and know of. Hopefully the Municipality together with SAPS will still have more raids and this will help us to reduce the number of these illegal doctors,’ he said.
Those that were arrested are mainly foreign nationals including two Congolese nationals and a Ugandan national who are believed to be part of a wider syndicate of illegal backstreet abortion practitioners. The Head of iTrump, Hoosen Moolla, said that the work of the designated task team, made up of SAPS, Metro Police and City officials should be commended. The raid saw the task team seize a number of items from the abortion premises, including certain traditional medicines and drugs used to carry out the dangerous practice. Moolla added that, ‘We just hope that the arrests will lead to positive convictions and we are pleased with the results as this means saving more lives.’
The bogus practitioners usually advertise their services on lamp posts and by distributing pamphlets and business cards across inner City buildings. Their so-called operations are usually conducted in dark or dimly lit rooms in some of the City’s dilapidated buildings. The distribution of pamphlets and sticking of posters on buildings and lamp posts has also contributed to the problem of litter in the City.
Gumede has appealed to young women who choose the abortion route to ensure that they go to government hospitals in order to have the service done legally and not to put their lives at risk.
