Module 3: Toxicology - Section 7: Legal Aspects

TOX 7.4: COIDA Exercise

Question 1:

You see a patient at the Community Health Centre who injured his back at work the previous day. He has been hired as a casual labourer for a contractor who hired him for a day from the side of the road.

As a casual is he entitled to have his injury covered by COIDA?

Question 2:

A farmworker is admitted to hospital with acute organophosphate poisoning and dies in hospital.

What cover is provided by COIDA for the family?

Question 3:

A patient presents to you with a persistent burning sensation of the chest, cough and a loss of ability to sing in the church choir. He works for the municipality - one of his tasks is to photocopy plans. It transpires that he is exposed to ammonia from the copying process. You make the diagnosis of tracheitis (inflammation of the trachea).

Outline the procedure for submitting a claim under COIDA.

Question 4:

You have a patient/ex-employee who has been diagnosed with organic solvent encephalopathy. His job was to check tanks containing various fuels and organic solvents, and to verify the accuracy of meters, e.g. in service station pumps. He is now disabled to the extent that he cannot count change properly and would have difficulty learning any new job. After years following submission of his claim, he is finally awarded 15 percent permanent disablement by the COIDA administration.

a) He asks you what this will mean in respect of a payout. Explain the implications.

b): He is dissatisfied with the percentage and wishes to put in an objection. Explain the objection procedure under COIDA.

Question 5:

5.1 An employee, arriving for work, is injured when his car collides with a company truck in the road outside the factory. Is this injury covered by COIDA?

5.2 An employee is shot in a robbery of the premises. Are these injuries covered by COIDA?

Question 6:

6.1 A nurse sustains needle stick injury while tending to an HIV positive patient and receives prophylactic antiretroviral therapy. She has a severe reactive anxiety and receives two counselling sessions from a psychologist. Is this treatment covered by COIDA?

6.2 Follow up testing 2 months later reveals that she is HIV positive. What if anything is she covered for?

Question 7:

A welder injures his back at work and is treated by an orthopaedic surgeon, who completes his Final Report declaring that there is minimal residual impairment. A year later the welder comes to see you with chronic disabling back pain, which he relates to the original incident. What are the questions that need to be answered in this case? How would you proceed?

Postgraduate Diploma in Occupational Health (DOH) - Modules 3: Occupational Medicine & Toxicology (Basic) by Profs Mohamed Jeebhay and Rodney Ehrlich, Health Sciences UCT is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 South Africa License. Major contributors: Mohamed Jeebhay, Rodney Ehrlich, Jonny Myers, Leslie London, Sophie Kisting, Rajen Naidoo, Saloshni Naidoo. Source available from here. For any updates to the material, or more permissions beyond the scope of this license, please email healthoer@uct.ac.za or visit www.healthedu.uct.ac.za. Last updated Jan 2007.
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