10 new clinics open in South Africa townships
Cape Town - Marie Stopes South Africa (MS South Africa) has opened 10 new mini-clinics in townships around Durban and Johannesburg, bringing health services direct to the heart of the squatter areas. People living in townships such as Groutville and Ivory Park in the KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng provinces now no longer have to travel miles to access sexual and reproductive healthcare (SRH) services.
Life in the townships is hard, with high unemployment, few prospects and little or no access to basic amenities, such as electricity or running water. These problems are compounded by a shortage of trained medical staff, little awareness of SRH and a public health system that’s overstretched and struggling to deliver even basic services.
The opening of the ten new mini-clinics marks a huge step forward in helping to meet some of the vast unmet need for SRH services in these underserved squatter areas. Using small pre-fabricated buildings stocked with basic essential equipment and furnishings, and staffed by a small but highly efficient team, the mini-clinics are extremely cost effective to set up and run so the model can be replicated at low cost.
The clinics provide a number of services, including short and long-term methods of contraception, safe abortion services, HIV counselling and testing, STI infection treatments and pregnancy testing. Clients requiring more specialised services like vasectomies, and sterilisations are referred to one of MS South Africa’s main centres.
“Placing these clinics directly in the heart of the squatter areas will make a huge difference to the people of these ten townships”, said Laila Abbas of MS South Africa. “We can offer services, like long-term methods of contraception that simply aren’t otherwise available to women and which give them choice about when they have children. In areas such as these, that choice can have an enormous impact on not only the women themselves, but their whole families.”
And it isn’t just the health professionals who are helping to make a difference in the townships. MS South Africa plans to attach a Community Based Educator (CBE) to each mini-clinic to raise awareness in the community about a wide range of SRH topics. By telling people about the different types of contraceptives available; the dangers of illegal abortion; and the benefits of male circumcision in helping to prevent the spread of HIV, the CBEs will be playing a key role in promoting safer sex and helping people to make an informed choice about their health.
The opening of these 10 new mini-clinics is part of a wider initiative by Marie Stopes International around the world to ensure that people in even the most marginalised communities have access to high quality SRH services.