Cape Town - A mobile clinic in Bellville - which has been providing HIV-prevention services, including sterile needles for drug users - had to hastily suspend its services this week after local councillors challenged the validity of the service.
Step Up Clinic, which is run by an NGO, TB/HIV Care Association, provides mobile clinic-based health services focused on HIV-prevention and the reduction of drug-related harms in different parts of the city.
Since May the clinic - which has been operating from Teilman Marais Park along Durban Road - had been supplying “injecting” drug users with sterile needles, syringes, condoms, HIV counselling, and had been disposing of contaminated needles in an effort to “reduce harm and HIV transmission among drug users”.
But after residents raised concerns that the clinic attracted crime to the area and encouraged drug use, clinic staff were this week summoned to a meeting by local authorities.
They were ordered to close shop as the clinic’s operations were “illegal”.
Catherine Williams, a professional nurse who runs the clinic, said the closure had left her clients “stranded and at high risk of HIV”.
She said councillors took issue with the fact that the clinic operated in a park without council approval.
Williams said a memorandum of understanding, signed with the council a while back, discussed the mobile clinic project “and the council didn’t object to it”.
“After five months of getting safer injecting equipment, drug users will now have to do without this essential service.
“There is always the chance that they could start sharing needles again - putting themselves at risk of HIV infection, including hepatitis,” she said.
But councillor Leonore van der Walt from Ward 2 - who had a meeting with the clinic management including the chairman of subcouncil 6 Sam Pienaar - denied that she deemed the clinic as “illegal”, citing that the “political leadership” of the area was concerned that the project was being run in a public park in a residential area.
“We do not deem the clinic to be illegal… in fact, I commend the members of the TB/HIV Care Association for their passion and commitment to helping people who are addicted to drugs with all the related trauma and risk of their addiction.
“But we do not believe that the public park is a suitable venue to hand out the needles and have advised the association that it can apply for the use of a municipal building for this project,” she said.
Van der Walt said the clinic introduced the project without consulting her or Pienaar.
In contrary to the perceptions that residents had about the clinic, Williams said its role was purely providing health services to the “vulnerable community, who faced so much stigma from society”.
“They (the council) said they were getting lots of complaints about us using the park as it was attracting drug users to the area. But the reason that we used the park in the first place was that it was already a hot spot for many drug users.
“The drug use didn’t increase just because we were there. When we started the park was already littered with lots of syringes and needles… this proves that the drug use problem was here long before we got here,” she said.
Rudolph Basson, key populations project co-ordinator from TB/HIV Care Association, said the NGO had decided to suspend services of the clinic as it didn’t want to cause any tension in the Bellville community.
“We have decided to suspend our services temporarily as we don’t want to cause any friction with anybody,” he said.
Basson said in conducting research on drug use in different parts of the city, it was found that a third of “injecting” drug users were based in Bellville.
“Long before we came into the picture people in the area were injecting drugs. Harassing us out of the area is not going to change the circumstances of drug users… instead it will leave them worse off as they will start engaging in risky behaviour of sharing needles again.
“Our services were addressing the harms associated with drug use. Even if we are no longer there, people will continue using… even it’s harmful doing so,” he said.
While the clinic provided a similar service to other areas - including the CBD, Observatory, Woodstock, Wynberg, Summer Greens and Joe Slovo near Milnerton - it was only in Bellville that it faced resistance from the community.
It provided services twice a week in the area.
The organisation’s research showed that some of the “injecting” drug users used the same needle for prolonged periods or more than six months, even “renting it out to others for R10”.
This not only increased transmission of HIV and hepatitis, but a blunt needle exposed users to multiple infections.
Councillor Siyabulela Mamkeli denied there was a memorandum of understanding between the council and the organisation. “There is no memorandum of understanding between the organisation and the city,” he said.
Cape Argus
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