Witnessing injustice: What is the student’s role in advocating for patients?

Abstract

The state of the healthcare system of any country is, inextricably, an indicator of the overall performance of the country [1]-it is one of the most important parameters that shows the separation between the First World and the Third. Yet a country like South Africa (SA) is able to boast First-World status to a certain extent, while at the same time, more than half of its population lives in dire poverty. [2] This article focuses on how the unequal and unjust distribution of basic healthcare services to people of colour in apartheid SA laid the foundation for these disparities, and has allowed whiteness to remain the definitive currency in receiving the best healthcare possible in SA, 24 years into our democracy. It first defines healthcare disparities in the context of the SA population, understanding the role that the government should play in protecting vulnerable patients, and exploring the role that medical students can play in protecting patients from being subjected to injustice. Under apartheid rule, the black African, coloured and Indian populations of SA were all harshly discriminated against because they did not qualify as white citizens. [3] The term 'black' in this paper is therefore used to encompass all these racial groups. The purpose of this article is not to point out that apartheid rule was unjust-that is a blatant blemish in SA history. Instead, it serves to underscore the facts that there exists severe health inequity between the different racial groups in SA, and that there has been very little change effected since the abolishment of apartheid rule to redress This open-access article is distributed under Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0.