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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Nonceba Lubanga, RN, MPH, Office of Child and Family Health, NYC Administration for Children's Services, 150 William Street, New York, NY 10038, 212-676-6891, nonceba.lubanga@dfa.state.ny.us, Charmaine Fitzig, RN, DrPH, Department of Health Professions - Nursing, York College of The City University of New York, 94-20 Guy R. Brewer Boulevard, Science Building - Room 110A, Jamaica, NY 11451, and Lydia Clark-Sumpter, MSN, PNP, RN, Bachelor of Science Nursing Department, Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York, 1650 Bedford Avenue, c/o Room 200 Carroll Street, Brooklyn, NY 11225.

ABSTRACT

The legacy of apartheid and human rights violations continue to have devastating health consequences on the majority of the people in South Africa in spite of the dispensation of 1994. The preamble of the International Code of Ethics for Nurses (2000) states: Nurses have four fundamental responsibilities: To promote health, to prevent illness, to restore health and to alleviate suffering. Inherent in nursing is respect for human rights, including the right to life, to dignity and to be treated with respect. Nursing care is unrestricted to considerations of age, colour, creed, culture, disability or illness, gender, nationality, politics, race or social status… Under apartheid in South Africa, there were many instances of the violation of this code by individual nurses, the South African Nursing Council (SANC) and the South African Nursing Association (SANA). Some examples of these violations were:

• Nurses and hospitals were instructed to keep a list of patients with bullet and buckshot wounds for police review, and to cooperate with the government. • The law made it a criminal offense to place a white nurse under the supervision of a black nurse.

The nursing council was well aware of segregation in health treatment, but accommodated this instead of protesting against it. In its report to The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa in 1997, during the transition period before the new democratically elected government came to power, the interim Nursing Council admitted to the following: “The need for treatment was ignored even for emergency care on the basis of race, acceptance occurred without protest to gross inequalities in nurses' training by race, and, there was a failure to take any steps to improve healthcare facilities for blacks…”

Although the council apologized for its actions, it did not establish procedures that assured that human rights violations were adequately investigated and that those nurses who violated human rights were brought to justice and held accountable by their professional regulatory body.

This paper will examine specific nursing practices in South Africa, during apartheid, which violated the International Code of Ethics for Nurses.

Learning Objectives: