Bongani Siqoko
The road to Alexandra clinic is lined with filthy industrial buildings. But the large, brightly painted clinic looks cared for and cheerful. Many visitors mistake it for a creche.
Inside, however, it looks like any other state-funded health institution. Very long queues, busy nurses, crying children and wheelchairs fill the waiting room.
The clinic will be forced to close down if it does not get more funding from the government, staffers say. This follows a budget cut of R9-million by the Department of Health. “We were getting R21-million a year, but now we only get R12-million. What can you do with R12-million these days?” asks a senior nurse at the clinic.
Director Catherine Mvelase says although the clinic is expecting another R1,2-million from the Eastern Metropolitan Local Council, it still won’t be enough. The clinic, which has been operating for 68 years, treats more than 1 000 patients a day from Alexandra township – which has a population of about 500 000 squeezed into 2,5km2.
It is also struggling to pay the R5-million it owes the Gauteng provincial administration for drugs. “We are trying to pay what we can,” says Mvelase. Every month the clinic has been buying R210 000 worth of drugs, but since the Hillbrow hospital closed down it has been forced to double that amount.
“We are getting more people from Yeoville, Hillbrow, Alex, Midrand and Berea who have been referred to us by Hillbrow hospital,” says Sister Legora Marumo. As a result the clinic’s pharmacy has run out of some essential drugs. “For weeks we have been telling people to come back later for these drugs,” she says.
If the clinic shuts down, sick children and pregnant women will suffer. Although it has limited resources, the clinic still treats hundreds of children with diarrhoea, flu, pneumonia and asthma.
The children’s observation area has only four beds. It is overcrowded and sometimes four children have to share one bed.
The adult observation areas are the same. Three women share one bed, and the women are sometimes housed with male patients. Only two professional nurses, a porter and an assistant nurse are on duty at any given time for all three wards.
The situation is even worse in the maternity ward. There are only two midwives to look after women who are about to deliver or who have just given birth. Women are given only three hours to rest after giving birth. “We cannot do otherwise, there are other women queuing up for the beds,” says Marumo.