, a former clinical manager at Mosego NGO that housed some of the patients.This after the Life Esidimeni facilities were shut down due to budgetary constraints by the Gauteng Health Department in June 2016.“This court must decide whether somebody is criminally responsible for the deaths in this regard. Specifically, if in the end the person was assaulted and where someone was responsible, this court must make such a finding.”and that their weight loss was abnormal.
Professor Gregory Tintinger shed light on the medical cause of deaths of mental health patients, based on post-mortems. “When the person has lost 27% of their body weight in just three months that’s very abnormal. We will always try and establish the cause for such a degree of weight [loss].” “It could include factors such as TB and others. But none of these were found in the autopsy which may lead to consider that there was another possibility such as starvation. There are two criteria that need to be met to consider the possibility of starvation,” explained Professor Tintinger.