When the now legendary Phelophepa train rolls into town people in surrounding villages flock to make use of its services, not only to have a tooth pulled or get a new pair of spectacles, but to learn much-needed primary health-care skills.
The health train was born 11 years ago as a partnership between Transnet’s corporate social investment department and the optometry section of the Rand Afrikaans University to provide eye care to rural communities. A year later Transnet launched the train as a fully-fledged health-care centre, which now offers dentistry, psychology, basic health-care education and pharmacy services.
The Phelophepa train operates for 36 weeks each year, stopping in rural areas for one week at time.
Treatment is free, but medication costs R5 per prescription, and an eye test and spectacles cost R40.
The recently introduced basic health education programme aims to educate community members at every stop along the railway line. Bulelwa Ntwecu (37), an unemployed mother of three from Baziya village near Umtata, made sure she secured a place on the course, even though it meant a long taxi ride from her village every day. Ntwecu is a volunteer at her local clinic and believes the skills she learned on the course will help her to care for people living with HIV/Aids.
She says her village has been crippled by ignorance about the pandemic, but believes that she and the five other volunteers who completed the course will now be able to work more effectively to educate and reduce the stigma around Aids. ‘We were trying to enlighten them before the train came here, but now I think we’ll do better.â€
The course covered basic health care issues including how to grow vegetable gardens, the importance of baby immunisation, essentials of home-based care and how to maintain hygiene for good health.
The train offers learning opportunities for those who work on board as well as those in the communities it serves. In the past 10 years it has offered more than 7 000 students the opportunity to acquire much-needed on-the-job training through its volunteer programme.
Anli Kruger (21), a third-year curative health student at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North West University, says her experience on the train has been a tremendous growth opportunity and will help to make her a better nurse.
‘We worked really hard, and saw more than 3 000 patients in the two weeks we were on the train. I learned such a lot, particularly as I was exposed to conditions that we don’t really see in the North West. Because there is a lot of unemployment and poverty in the Eastern Cape province, stress levels are higher and many patients have tension headaches.â€
Kruger was also exposed to rural village life for the first time and was moved by the way in which extended families take care of each other.
When her practical stint on the train is completed she will be awarded a diploma and be credited with the number of hours she has worked on the train. Nursing students are expected to perform 370 hours of community work before they are registered with the South African Nursing Council.
Dr Lynette Coetzee, project manager for Phelophepa train, says the aim of the volunteer programme is to make students aware of the country’s health-care needs.
The programme has proved so popular that it is now oversubscribed and tertiary institutions choose only their best and brightest students to participate in the programme.
‘Our students are young and in the space of two weeks they get bombarded with a lot of things,†says Coetzee.
But, she says, the challenges they face are an advantage to their careers. ‘We build young champions for the future.â€