As the world focuses its attention on the Cape plc court case in London, thousands of people, women and men, who worked on now defunct asbestos mines are presenting with asbestosis.

About 4 000 people are bringing a claim against Cape plc-owned mines in the Northern Cape and the Northern Province which will be heard in April next year.

It is estimated that as many as 1 500 South Africans are dying of an asbestos-related disease every year.

Research conducted among ex-women miners in the Northern Province has found that many of them started working on the mines when they were as young as six years, despite legislation that prohibited this.

The women, most of whom have been widowed after their husbands died of asbestos-related diseases, were mostly employed as cobbers (crushing of the asbestos rock), sweepers and packers.

Now 50 years later, these women are struggling to access compensation as they are left to support extended families and children who have also been exposed to asbestos.

What is even more alarming is that asbestos mining continued in these areas up until nine years ago, while studies as far back as 1931 pointed towards the link between the mining activities and asbestos related disease.

Research conducted by Professor Tony Davies of the National Centre for Occupational Health found that over 96% of the women examined could be clinically diagnosed with some form of asbestosis.

Describing it as an epidemic of asbestos-related disease raging in the Northern Province, one of the poorest provinces in SA, Davies said there was a large, unrecognised burden of lung diseases among women in rural areas of South Africa who have worked on asbestos mines.

“They have become a forgotten community,” he said.

Dr Sophia Kisting of the Industrial Health Research Group at the University of Cape Town (UCT) agrees that of the people living with asbestos, the rural communities are the worst off.

“What is a further indictment is that there is no national programme to address this tragedy,” she said.

She said the overall compensation system was failing the ex-miners and their families and that the compensation was too little.

She said the rehabilitation of the mine dumps was another crucial issue as well as the importance of post mortems.

“People are usually too grief stricken to discuss post mortems, but this is one way in which we can help to access compensation for the families.”

It is a well-known fact that South Africa was at the forefront of producing the dangerous blue (95% in SA) and brown asbestos. While millions of pounds and dollars has been paid by these companies in compensating people overseas, nothing has been paid to anyone in South Africa.

According to Professor Neil White, Senior Specialist at the Occupational Medicine Clinical Research Unit at UCT’€™s Lung Institute, as many as 1 500 South Africans were dying of asbestos-related lung cancer every year.

“Asbestosis is the leading compensated disease in South Africa at the moment,” White said.

He said there was a huge number of occupational health issues in this country, but that very little was being done to address it.