Mental Health Around The World: In South Africa, 94 Psychiatric Patients Die After Being Moved To Unauthorized Facilities

Officials are calling for criminal prosecution after an investigation uncovered the deaths of 94 psychiatric patients in South Africa due to negligence. All of the patients were transported over the course of a few months in 2016 from a psychiatric facility to unauthorized charities in an attempt to save money, according to a report published Wednesday.

The patients were moved from a unit of Life Healthcare Group in Gauteng province to 27 other facilities. Only a single death was attributed to a mental illness. The remaining 93 people died of dehydration, diarrhea, epilepsy, heart attacks and other causes.

“The decision was unwise and flawed, with inadequate planning and a chaotic and rushed or hurried implementation process,” Professor Malegapuru Makgoba said in the report detailing the investigation. The report was compiled after 80 hours of interviews with family members and inspectors who likened conditions in the facilities to those of concentration camps.

Marie Collitz, whose 61-year-old husband Freddie Collitz died in one of the centers, said in the report that she wasn’t told when he died and that employees told her he was sleeping when she called. She found that he had died dehydrated and malnourished, with a wound to his head and blisters and sores on his body.

“He should not have died that way, not the man I shared my life with,” said Collitz.

Makgoba said he expected the death toll to rise as more information was uncovered. The head of the provincial government’s health department, Qedani Mahlangu, resigned a day before the report was set to be released.

A World Health Organization report on the country found there was no official mental health policy in place in South Africa. More than 17 million people suffer from depression, substance abuse, anxiety, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, according to the Mental Health Federation of South Africa, but the Department of Health spends only 4 percent of its budget to address treatment.