Agony lawsuit

More than 170 South Africans are to launch a landmark class-action lawsuit in the UK for faulty hip implants.

They are taking on prosthesis manufacturer DePuy International, an affiliate of the giant Johnson & Johnson corporation, after an English high court dismissed the company's objection to jurisdiction for the South African claimants.

DePuy Orthopaedics voluntarily recalled its ASR XL total hip-replacement system and the DePuy ASR hip resurfacing system nearly three years ago.

Pre-school teacher Ina Volschenk, 54, from Umhlanga, KwaZulu-Natal, was fitted with one of the implants in 2006.

She recalled the amount of faith her doctor had in the product.

"He called it the Rolls-Royce of all hip implants. But I do not blame him because we were all under the impression it was the best."

The "metal-on-metal" hip implants were taken off the market in 2010 following unexpectedly high "failure rates" of 12% for the ASR resurfacing system and 13% for the ASR XL system. Tests showed they could wear down and poison the bloodstream.

Heartbroken by the inability to get down to the level of her small pupils because she has been left with limited mobility, Volschenk hopes for justice to be served.

"When the time comes, I wish to tell them about the amount of pain they have caused thousands of people around the world.

"No amount of money paid out will ever reverse the wrong they did with their negligence," the grandmother of two said.

She and the other claimants have instructed South African medical malpractice attorneys CP van Zyl Inc - who are working with English barrister Hugh Preston QC in the group litigation - to claim damages running into millions of rands.

Attorney Sunelle van Heerden said: "Our South African clients were unable to sue DePuy in South Africa, and therefore started proceedings in England instead. The dismissal of DePuy's jurisdiction objection means that the claims can proceed to a trial, at which it will be argued that the hip implants were unsafe and defective, such as to impose a legal obligation upon DePuy to compensate victims for their pain, suffering and financial losses."

It would take two to three years to proceed with the case because of its complexity, Van Heerden said.

The South African patients are not the only ones claiming damages for the faulty implants.

More than 6 000 lawsuits against DePuy were pending in the US by December last year.

UK defence minister Andrew Robathan this year joined tens of thousands of implant recipients from across the globe in a lawsuit set to become one of the largest malpractice actions in the UK.

According to The Telegraph, the minister developed a non-cancerous tumour at the top of his leg within five years of undergoing an operation to resurface both his hips in 2006.

By the time he developed the tumour, the device - fitted in about 10000 British patients - had been recalled from the market.

Confused at how things went wrong is 65-year-old Pretoria caterer Sarna Coetsee, who now suffers chronic pain around her pelvic area and stomach after hip-replacement surgery in January 2011.

"I was a very active person growing up in the hope I would never have to take any medication when I grew older. But now I am forced to take anti-inflammatories for the rest of my life," she said.

Coetsee, whose husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's four years ago, was forced to change both their routines when the pain caused by her implant started.

"I can no longer sit or stand for long periods. I am very scared that my body will one day no longer be able to take the strain of the damage this implant is causing.

"I am trying to go on with my life with as much faith as possible, regardless of all this physical pain," Coetsee said.

The hip implant lawsuit comes in the wake of a global health scare over sub-standard breast implants, which is now the subject of a major lawsuit in France.

The trial against five executives of the French company Poly Implant Prothese began last month and includes 5000 civil plaintiffs and 300 lawyers.