Journalist Zenzele Ndebele has reported that a relative of his has been denied access to a dialysis machine by a South African hospital after being told he is a foreigner.

“I have a relative admitted at a public hospital in South Africa. He needs a dialysis machine and Drs told us they don’t put foreigners on dialysis machine we should go to a private hospital. (This person has a valid work permit).” Ndebele wrote on Twitter.

Hundreds of Ndebele’s Twitter followers urged him to take legal action against the hospital.

However, legal experts have opined that it is not cut in stone that one must access public healthcare. This is enshrined in the case Soobramoney v Minister of Health, KwaZulu-Natal of 1997 which the court had to adjudicate on the universal constitutional right to medical treatment as against the problem of an under-resourced health care system.

Soobramoney, who was suffering from chronic renal failure, sought dialysis treatment from a state hospital in Durban. The hospital had been forced to adopt a set of guidelines for dialysis treatment because of its limited facilities