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Patients attended to in open after clinic is shut

Picture: Veli Nhlapo
Picture: Veli Nhlapo

Nurses are forced to attend to patients under trees while those in need of chronic medication are turned away from a clinic in Mpumalanga.

This was after the Victor Khanye municipality in Delmas locked the health facility's building for failure to pay rent of more than R4-million.

The FC Dumat building in the CBD was locked last week Tuesday and had been accommodating the clinic, Delmas education circuit offices and police detectives.

The municipality said it had a contract with the provincial public works, road and transport department for the use of the building, however, the department failed to pay rent for 11 years. Since the lockout, employees had to seek alternative ways to keep working, such as squatting at other government buildings.

However, several services had been hampered because of the unavailability of medical equipment, chronic medication and patient files that remained locked at the clinic.

Cases had also been repeatedly postponed in court as investigators could not access dockets from their offices.

Some of the detectives and education department employees had been working out of the boots of their cars before they were accommodated by Delmas police station.

Yesterday, patients were seen queuing in the shade to get into two mobile clinics that had been deployed from nearby farms.

Nurses were taking a register at a table in the open, inquiring about patients' illnesses in front of others and then sending them to the mobile clinic for physical consultations.

"Unfortunately we have to do this. It's better now because we have a mobile clinic, unlike last week when we didn't have any," said a nurse who did not want to be identified for fear of victimisation. "We still can't do certain services like antenatal care or dispense chronic medication because it is locked up."

Nurses were seen walking to nearby shops to relieve themselves.

Some of the farm dwellers who were using the mobile clinics were now hitch-hiking to town for medical attention.

Patients told Sowetan that they felt humiliated to be attended to in full view of other people.

"There are no toilets, chairs and nurses have no patient medical records, which makes it difficult for them to know exactly what the patient is suffering from.

"Some people with HIV are embarrassed to talk to nurses about their health because there is no privacy," said Lerato Mokoena, who had taken her one-month-old baby for a check-up.

She also suffers from low blood pressure.

"Nurses told me to go elsewhere because they did not have medication," she said.

sifilel@sowetan.co.za

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