Manto didn't jump queue, says doctor

Professor Jeff Wing, the minister of health's doctor before, during and after her liver transplant in March, has reiterated that her liver problems earlier in 2007 had nothing to do with alcohol.

Wing, of the Johannesburg hospital and the University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, said he also wanted to repeat "for the umpteenth time" that Manto Tshabalala-Msimang had not displaced anyone on the liver-transplant waiting list.

He was reacting to newspaper reports that Tshabalala-Msimang had consumed whisky and wine while at Cape Town's Medi-Clinic in 2005 for a shoulder operation.

Wing was head of the team that replaced the minister's liver with one taken from a donor who had died a few days previously.

The minister was reported to have sent Medi-Clinic staff to buy alcohol and food for her from a nearby supermarket.

It has been suggested for many years that Tshabalala-Msimang is fond of alcoholic beverages.

These reports surfaced, and rumours resurfaced, this week in the wake of the president's firing of Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, the deputy minister of health.

"Obviously, I know nothing about what happened in Cape Town," said Wing, "but I can say, yet again, that the minister had to have a liver transplant due to cirrhosis of the liver.

"But cirrhosis means 'scarring' in general and has multiple causes. The cause of her liver disease was hepatitis, not alcohol."

Regarding claims that the minister had jumped the queue for her new liver, Wing said: "In this country, there is no long waiting list as such for livers. In fact, when it comes to liver transplants, we have more donors than recipients.

"The minister's tissue type rendered her a universal recipient. She could have been the recipient of any potential donor."

At a press conference following the minister's transplant in March, Russell Britz, the Johannesburg hospital's chief transplant surgeon, said: "With a liver, we don't have a machine that can keep you alive. There's a high death rate, so we take the sickest people on the list first."

Britz said there was a list of 20 to 25 patients waiting for a liver. About 20 livers are transplanted annually, meaning the waiting list is turned over once a year.

• This article was originally published on page 2 of The Sunday Independent on August 19, 2007