The Health Professions Council of South Africas (HPCSA) has struck off more than 1 300 medical practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal from its register.
An Umhlanga doctor was guilty of unprofessional conduct after he sterilised a patient without first obtaining her written consent, the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) found yesterday.
Rajesh Mahabir was suspended from practising as a gynaecologist and obstetrician for six months, but his sentence was suspended for two years on condition he was not found guilty of another similar transgression during that time.
The HPCSA charged Mahabir with unprofessional conduct in November last year. His former patient, Sherryl Pillay, lodged a complaint with the council after he performed a tubal ligation on her in November 2008, during a Caesarean section to deliver her second son.
Mahabir appeared before the council last Tuesday, when he pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
He claimed Pillay signed consent in his rooms before the procedure but that the consent form went missing. He said she gave verbal consent on the operating table.
The council then heard Pillay, her husband, Sivantharan and a nursing sister, Pamela Read, testify last Tuesday and Wednesday. The matter was postponed until yesterday, when Mahabir’s attorney, Altus Janse van Rensburg, announced that his client had changed his plea to guilty.
In his plea explanation, Mahabir maintained that, as far as he could remember, Pillay consented to a tubal ligation in writing on October 25, 2008.
However, he conceded that he should have obtained proper consent when he discovered that the form was missing and that oral consent, given on the operating table, did not constitute proper consent.
In a separate but related civil case, Pillay is also claiming R360 000 in damages from Mahabir. This was to cover the cost of in vitro fertilisation |as she has said she and her husband would like to have another child but would not be able to do so naturally.
