Dr Mark Blaylock, the doctor who was disciplined for throwing the Health MEC’€™s photograph in the bin, still does not know his fate despite the fact that a task team set up to investigate allegations against him completed its work almost a month ago.

Blaylock’€™s legal representative, the AIDS Law Project (ALP), wrote to MEC Peggy Nkonyeni last week and asked for a copy of the task team’€™s report by last Friday but she failed to respond.

The task team was announced by Nkonyeni on 29 April during her Budget speech. It held hearings at Manguzi Hospital, where Blaylock is chief medical officer, on 7th May.

The task team’€™s chairperson, Professor Eddie Mhlangu, is known to have briefed the MEC on the team’€™s findings a few days later.

Mbangwa initially told the media that the report would be released on 19 May. However, since then he has offered a number of excuses for the delay including that the report first had to be presented to the provincial Cabinet and then that the department was awaiting certain information from the Word Health Organisation.

Mbangwa has since failed to respond to queries about the ongoing delay, including why the MEC had failed to respond to Blaylock’€™s legal team.

Blaylock has been working at a hospital in Carletonville since the beginning of May. This was after the department failed to officially inform him that his month’€™s suspension ‘€“ the initial punishment levied on him after a disciplinary hearing ‘€“ had been lifted by the MEC pending the outcome of the task team’€™s investigations.

Blaylock threw the MEC’€™s picture into a dustbin after Nkonyeni accused rural doctors of being more interested in profit than caring for people.

The Rural Doctors Association of SA (Rudasa) and the SA HIV Clinicians’€™ Society requested a meeting with the MEC to discuss her remarks, and this finally took place on 21 May.

However, the organisations’€™ concerns were not addressed at the meeting and the MEC undertook to set up a follow-up meeting to address these two weeks ago but failed to do so. ‘€“ Health-e News Service.