By the SayPro Chief Legal Officer- Neftaly Malatjie
Distinguished Guests, Colleagues, Healthcare Professionals, Legal Advocates, and Community Members,
Good day.
It is a privilege to address you today on this important occasion — SayPro’s 2025 National Healthcare Decisions Day. As the Chief Legal Officer of SayPro, I stand not only as a guardian of compliance and regulation, but as a committed advocate for justice, human rights, and legal empowerment in healthcare.
Healthcare decisions are deeply personal — yet they are also legal rights. The ability to make informed decisions about one’s body, treatment, care, and future is protected by our constitution, by ethical frameworks, and by international human rights law.
But here is the challenge: many people don’t know these rights exist. And even when they do, the systems to support them are too often inaccessible, unclear, or ineffective.
That’s where SayPro steps in.
In 2025, SayPro’s legal efforts have focused on one clear objective: To protect and promote the legal rights of individuals to make autonomous healthcare decisions — and to ensure those rights are honoured in every clinic, hospital, home, and policy.
This year, we have:
- Expanded our legal literacy campaigns, helping individuals understand their right to informed consent, advanced directives, and health confidentiality
- Worked with government and civil society to review healthcare laws and policies to ensure they are inclusive, enforceable, and patient-centered
- Supported training for healthcare providers to understand their legal obligations when it comes to respecting patient decisions
- And developed tools for families and vulnerable groups to navigate complex medical and legal environments with clarity and dignity
We must remember: legal empowerment is health empowerment. A right not known is a right not exercised. A law not implemented is a law ignored. And a patient not heard is a patient betrayed.
To healthcare workers: your duty is not only medical — it is legal. Respecting a patient’s informed choice is not optional. It is the law.
To policymakers: your responsibility is to ensure that our legal frameworks support real-life application — with fairness, accessibility, and consistency.
To our communities: your voice matters. You have the right to ask questions. You have the right to say yes, or no. And you have the right to be treated with dignity, always.
On this National Healthcare Decisions Day, let us reaffirm our shared commitment to building a health system rooted in justice, choice, transparency, and human dignity.
Happy National Healthcare Decisions Day 2025.
Let us uphold the law. Let us defend the right to choose. Let us protect every decision — with compassion and with courage.
Thank you.
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