Pensioners maintain to pay people to queue for them at Nyanga clinic

Community activist Sindiswa Godwana, who runs Usindiso Community Development, says they gain noted that the service at the Nyanga East clinic is “very poor”.

• Elderly people gain been complaining about poor services at the Nyanga Community Day Clinic in Cape Town.
• They say that there are stockouts on certain medications, long waiting periods in queues and missing folders.
• The Western Cape health department has urged patients to report all their complaints so that “corrective measures can be keep in plot to improve the quality of care”.

Sick and elderly people say they wait for hours in the cold and rain outside the Nyanga Community Day Clinic honest to produce an appointment to see a doctor. Some patients also complain that the clinic has been running out of stock of chronic medication.

Bukelwa Gabuza, 79, says she has lived in Mau-Mau, Nyanga, since 1981. She is being treated for arthritis, ulcers and eczema, and she uses a cane to walk.

Gabuza says she has not been able to grasp her daily medication because the clinic has not had stock.

She and other pensioners who can no longer stand for several hours, now pay young men R50 to queue on their behalf.

She believes services at the clinic gain got worse since the provincial health department took over management from the City of Cape Town in July last year. She claims that patient folders recede missing, nurses are rude and there there is only one doctor on duty. She says mothers with infants don’t maintain changing facilities and the toilets are filthy.

“When the clinic was managed by the City, we had dedicated care for people on chronic medication. We got treated with dignity. Now we’re mixed with seriously ill patients,” she said.

When Gabuza went to collect her medication last month, she had to return home empty-handed after spending hours at the clinic, she says.

She says she borrows the medication for her ulcers from a neighbour who goes to Current Somerset Hospital. “I must maintain the pills. The [private] pharmacies charges R300 per packet,” she says.

Gabuza says her pension is barely enough to buy groceries for the month and pay her funeral policy. “Some people mediate that when you live with your children in the house, they give you money. But kids acquire their own problems,” she says.

Community activist Sindiswa Godwana, who runs Usindiso Community Development, says they race programmes to assist pensioners support up their treatment schedules. She says they maintain noted that the service at the Nyanga East clinic is “very poor”.

“Even when they’re very sick, people are turned away because they did not produce an appointment first,” says Godwana.

Western Cape health department communications officer, Monique Johnstone, said that the clinic had only offered limited services before the province took over. Asked about some of the issues at the clinic, she apologised and said the department was working to improve services “while trying to accommodate a growing community”.

She said people were encouraged to discuss the problems with the clinic manager or the helpdesk so services could be improved. “Unfortunately, if a complaint is not reported then we cannot establish corrective measures in plot to improve the quality of care to our patients,” she said.

She said a current project to archive and merge patients’ folders would address the complaints about folders going missing and would design accessing services “much easier and less time-consuming.

She said patient toilets are cleaned daily. “We currently acquire two vacant cleaner posts and are faced with various uncontrollable circumstances such as illness, emergency leave, and other unforeseen challenges that may arise, but we always try to ensure that the toilets remain clean.”

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