Jim Day
LITTLE Leboteng Bakada is sick. The one- month-old girl is suckling at her mother’s breast, but every few moments a cough interrupts her meal for a few seconds before she starts suckling again.
”She has the flu,” says her mother, Yoliswa Bakada. ”It is because we stay in the shacks.”
Bakada has been sitting in the waiting-room of the Nelson Mandela Clinic in Bekkersdal on the West Rand since 8.30am, about five hours ago. There are still 20 people ahead of her. But sometime in the afternoon, one of the sisters or the doctor will examine Leboteng and probably give her some medicine.
Leboteng was born in the Bekkersdal Maternity/Obstetric Unit next door. The unit was opened in November, a major expansion to the clinic which opened three years ago.
Since the maternity unit was built, about five women each day come in, have their babies delivered, recuperate for six hours and then return to their homes across the street, in the squatter camp which stretches for more than a kilometre alongside the road.
Before the maternity unit was built, women in labour had to travel to the Leratong Hospital, about 20km away, if they could get there.
The Bekkersdal nurses say they have enough medicine and equipment to serve their patients properly. Bakada says she was pleased with the care she received when she had her baby, and with the care at the clinic.
Another woman in the waiting-room says her baby is coughing and has a rash on his arms. Sometimes she takes him to a ”better clinic” in Westonaria, but she doesn’t have enough money today to go there. She says she is happy there is a clinic in Bekkersdal.