RAMPAGING university students prevented patients being diagnosed at a hospital north of Pretoria yesterday.
About 500 students burnt the access control building of the University of Limpopo's Medunsa campus and two university vehicles, and blocked access to the campus – which also houses the hospital's laboratories.
"I have to access the laboratory to analyse critical patients' tissue samples for diagnosis," a professor, who did not want to be named, said.
"A doctor cannot treat without a diagnosis and it is like signing patients' death sentences if I do not process these samples."
The pathologist had to be assisted by other locked-out staff members to jump over a steel fence to escape as students hurled stones.
The professor said cancer patients were at greatest risk as delays in diagnosis could mean the growth of tumours to untreatable proportions.
"If patients die, I am morally and ethically liable. In the morning, I negotiated my way in but I had to come out as the students grew more aggressive," he said.
Students, who are demanding the resignation of the head of the medical school and its registrar, began their protest on Friday by burning a university bakkie.
At the heart of their anger is the situation of 13 medical students, who failed their final-year examinations, out of a class of about 250.
They believe their failure was due to irregularities in marking. One of them is said to have taken his script to another institution for remarking and passed.
Police spokesman Warrant Officer Mathews Nkoadi said police could only monitor the situation from outside as management had prevented them from entering the premises.
"Maybe they feared that students would be further provoked," Nkoadi said.
Repeated attempts to reach university spokesman Kgalema Mohuba were unsuccessful.
It is understood that Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande met the university management in Pretoria yesterday in an effort to find a solution.
Medunsa campus is in the process of demerging from the University of Limpopo.
From January, it will be known as Sefako Makgatho Medical School. - Sipho Masombuka