Meet the doctor who wants to take rural healthcare to the next level

When Dr Phelelani Dludla saw the devastating effect HIV/Aids was having on his peers before the introduction of antiretrovirals (ARVs), he focused on becoming a doctor so he could help save lives rather than observing from the sidelines.

Years later he made a similar decision to specialise in psychiatry after witnessing the mental health challenges of a sibling and wanting to help him and others.

He also later took on two more specialities, maternity and anaesthesia, in response to the need at the hospital where he's based. 

Dludla made headlines in 2020 when his passion for rural healthcare and the mental well-being of his patients came under the spotlight in a profile about him by the Discovery Foundation. 

He works as a GP with a focus on the three specialities at Benedictine District Hospital in Nongoma, KwaZulu-Natal.

Dludla, 37, spoke about his passion for science and later medicine, saying before studying the latter, he obtained a BSc with honours in microbiology at the University of Zululand.

“I had an interest as a high school pupil in medicine, but the turning point was when we were taken through Ngwelezana Hospital's pathology lab and assigned to an area where we were doing HIV tests in 2006.

“I realised people in my age group, most of their blood [tests] came back positive for HIV. This was before ARVs. I then had an interest to be more involved in trying to save lives than being on the sidelines,” he said.

This led him to enrol for a medical degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2008, which he completed in 2012, and later developed an interest in psychiatry.

This was sparked during training when he “realised it's an area people are uncomfortable going into as it challenges one's school of thought, thinking, belief systems and things that affect or guide the character of individuals”. 

“For me, the other thing that influenced [my interest] is just before my graduation in 2012, one of my siblings ended up with a mental illness which took him out of a job. It started as a depressive episode and then it became a depressive episode with psychotic features and then it ended up being full-blown depression with psychotic features. So taking care of him softened me towards psychiatry.”

While Dludla turned his focus to maternity and anaesthesia in response to the needs of the hospital, specialising in both had its challenges as it limited his areas of focus, given the environment he was in.

“It's been a mix of a bit of both worlds in the sense that I've had to look at what is needed by myself, in skill set, and also look at what is needed by the institution I'm in. I've had the joy of picking the area where I trained as an intern. 

“For me, most of the challenges were around the area of interest vs the availability of that area of interest,” he said.

With every challenge comes a reward and for Dludla, some of his included evolving from a junior doctor new to his chosen specialities to a leader in that field within his community.

Another is training younger doctors following in his footsteps. On whether he would consider leaving rural healthcare, Dludla said the thought has crossed his mind, but he realised staying there “is more about being a present help rather than pursuing my own dreams in specialities”.

“I've considered leaving. For the most part my issue with leaving was not knowing who's going to replace me. The mindset would shift to saying 'build more people like you, build more younger doctors that are still going to stay'.

“One of the things that assisted with pushing us to being passionate about rural health and offering medicine or healthcare in the rural setting was the conversations we used to have with our sponsors. They reminded us frequently their hope and purpose is to fund doctors who will not rush to come back into the city.”

So invested in rural healthcare is Dludla, that he has partnered with his peers in different careers, two in farming and one in IT, to look into creating a “consortium” that will drive job creation within his community.

“We came across a concept as we were chatting about a number of things. We came across a consortium concept where different businesses come together to tackle big projects, so that's what is on the cards.

“We're putting together our skills and our financial resources to achieve a goal where we are able to either create jobs in our small town or build facilities that will better create jobs for our community.”

Dludla said he also has ambitions to create a corporate company, similar to Netcare or Life Healthcare but catering for rural clients.

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