Some of Mmakaunyane residents have challenged the North West Department of Health to fast-track the deployment of nurses to their village, as their clinic is under staffed. The construction of the clinic started in January 2016 and was completed in August 2019 at a cost of an estimated R30 million.
Residents are calling on the department to ensure that services are improved. The failure of the clinic to operate for 24 hours has created a huge challenge for locals.
Some patients had to hire transport to go to neighbouring clinics, as they could not get helped at the local clinic.
“The way is big. It was supposed to have everything. We don’t have maternity ward. It only operates Monday to Sunday. We need it to operate 24 hours. We need doctor. We don’t have doctors. The doctor come only once a week,” says one resident.
“We used the mobile clinic for quite some time. Thank God that the department saw a need of us having a clinic, and they attended to us. Thanks God for that, and then secondly, I honestly believe that we need a maternity ward. We need a standby ambulance that’s going to be here 24 hours,” another resident adds.
Leader of the opposition party in the Moretele Local Municipality, the Agenda for Citizenry Governance, Shangy Mbekwa says the community requested a 24-hour clinic that has a maternity ward.
“The facility is so great, welcoming, but the operation is not so conducive, because it only operates Monday to Sunday, 7am to 5pm. Initially, when the community requested this clinic, we requested a 24-hour clinic that has got the maternity ward, but it hasn’t even got the maternity ward. It means after 5pm, we have to go back to the struggle of traveling a long distance to get a health services at Gauteng clinics,” says Mbekwa.
The Department of Health is forging ahead with most of its plans to improve health services by maintaining the existing infrastructure, improvement of health facilities and building new facilities where there is a need.
“If they want this clinic to be 24 hours, we will have to do an assessment, and we must do an assessment and check who else is responsible for 24-hour (clinics) closer here, because we can’t make all clinics. I have seen that thing of EFF that says make all clinics 24 hours. It’s without reality (sic). Some of them don’t need to be 24 hours. Some need to be 18; some need to be 12; some need to be 8. Hours of operation of a clinic have to do with the challenge the community is facing. Not all clinics in each community must be 24 hours, but one clinic central to them must be 24 hours of course,” explains Northwest Health MEC, Madoda Sambatha.
Sambatha, says his department wanted to build a district hospital facility to minimize the lack of services in Moretele.
“We are opening it and handing it to the community, because building clinics is not ownership by the department (sic). It’s social investment to the community, and (shows) that we are ready to fast-track service delivery. But it’s also a clinic very close to the city of Tshwane. We are also dealing with a challenge, where people (who) in the North West borders have serious challenges to accessibility of health facilities. One day, we must open a district hospital in Moretele, so that people of Moretele come to understand that they are served by their own province,” adds Sambatha.
The Department of Health has used this occasion to ramp-up the Vooma vaccination campaign.
