Sick clinic a health risk to staff, patients

Published Mar 8, 2017

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The Jeppe Street Clinic in Joburg’s inner city is facing closure because of the shocking state of the building.

So horrible is the infrastructure that the Gauteng Health Department has admitted the clinic is not conducive to treating patients.

Staff members and patients have been complaining about the dilapidated facilities and believe it is no longer fit to house a public health facility. The clinic's walls are mouldy, it smells, and the ceilings leak.

When Health-eNews visited, the staff were not comfortable to speak out about their working conditions.

But one agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, saying: “Even when we strike and raise our complaints with the (health) department, they don’t do anything. We are getting sick from this clinic.”

She said a clinic was a place where patients should at least feel as though they would be offered the chance to regain their health when they walked in. “But here, you instead feel sick.”

According to Jack Bloom, the DA’s spokesperson for health in the Gauteng Legislature, full-time staff at the clinic were getting chest infections because of the decaying state of the building in which they work.

“It is unacceptable that the health of staff and patients is affected by this sick building. It is another example of the inadequate maintenance of our health facilities,” Bloom said.

He called on the Health Department to act speedily to fix the building and to stop the clinic from deteriorating any further.

Nomelizwe Mcirha, a patient at the Jeppe Street Clinic, said: “I came here last week for my treatment and the staff were outside the clinic. They refused to go into the building the whole day, because of the unhealthy conditions.”

Mcirha said the clinic was smelly, but it was her nearest health facility and the others were too far away from where she stays.

The Gauteng budget released on Tuesday allocated less money for the maintenance and repair of infrastructure, decreasing the amount from R750 million in 2016/17 to R350m for the 2017/18 financial year.

According to Prince Hamnca, the department’s spokesperson, clinic visits were carried out weekly to enable the department to identify all infrastructure-related challenges and address them.

They were aware of the poor conditions at the Jeppe Street Clinic, he said.

ANA-Health-e News

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