An Ambulance of the Wrong Colour: Health professionals, human rights and ethics in South Africa

Colonial and apartheid racist policies have had a profound and enduring impact on health and health care in South Africa. Health professionals have a tainted history of collusion with practices that led to a systematic assault on the health of black people, and the violation of their human rights. This legacy of dehumanisation cannot but help to inform how we resolve the new ethical dilemmas facing the health sector.

This book has its origins in the Health and Human Rights Project (HHRP) Submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Institutional Hearings on the Health Sector, which were held in June 1997. The purpose of the HHRP Submission - and the networking that was required to produce it - was to facilitate a wider process of transformation aimed at ensuring the promotion of human rights as a core feature of the future South African health sector. The aim of this book is to ensure, in part, that unethical practices and behaviours that violate people's human rights continue to be questioned and challenged, so that a culture of respect for human rights will supplant that of complicity with abuse.