Vicious Dog Victim Off To SA For Treament

By Austin Kakande

The 72 year old man who is battling for his life at Kamuzu Central Hospital after being attacked by five vicious dogs in Lilongwe is due to leave for a South African hospital for further medical attention.

Last week, Malawians came together in rare a fashion of solidarity protesting the attack and how owner of the dogs, Dean Van  Schalhwal handled the issue. The  civil society led a demonstration to hand a petition to home affairs and internal security minister Aaron Sangala demanding immediate deportation of the white couple and stiff disciplinary measures against the nurse who conducted an HIV test on the victim.

However, in an interview on Friday, labour minister Yunus Mussa disclosed that Chimdima would be refereed to Sun Hill Hospital in South Africa for plastic surgery.

“The old man deserves compensation, but before all that is brought on the table we engaged Van Schalhwal’s lawyer in a discussion on the possibility of his client to consider sending him to South Africa at his own expense, and we are pleased that that he has agreed.

“So we are just finalizing some documentation for Mr. Chimdima to be flown to Sun Hill Hospital in South Africa for a plastic surgery and other medication and Mr. Van Schalhwal, who is still in police custody, has agreed to take care of the bill,” said Mussa.

The outspoken minister also disclosed that as soon as Chimdima returned from South Africa government would assign him a lawyer to start negotiating compensation with Van  Schalhwal.

“We will assign him a competent lawyer to help him table compensation negotiations, and the South African bills won’t be part of that compensation,” he said

Short URL: http://www.malawivoice.com/?p=2302

Posted by malawi voice on Jul 31 2010. Filed under NATIONAL NEWS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry