A timeline of collapse
To understand what led to the crises in the Free State it is helpful to backtrack to 2005 when the provincial scale-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) programmes across South Africa’s nine provinces began in earnest.
Trying to nurse ethically in a broken system
By Ufrieda Ho – “I didn’t go to nursing college to become a politician,” says the matron in her neat office in the facility she heads up.
Who will help the sick and needy?
By Ufrieda Ho – Back in the mid-90s, Angelina Manale Mookadi had dreams of becoming a nurse. “I thought it was a profession I could afford because the government was going to help me pay for my studies. And I always wanted to help my community,” she says, sitting in the kitchen of her home in Tsephong, outside of Welkom, in the Free State.
Health workers still face prosecution
The #BopheloHouse94 community health workers have been on trial since April 2014. Their crime? Holding a peaceful night vigil in the hope that their political leaders will explain why they had all been dismissed.
Election-year clinic upgrades are welcome, but will they be enough?
By Ufrieda Ho – All over the Free State things are buzzing with public works projects, but also with electioneering. It seems there are as many road works and infrastructure upgrades as there are election posters on walls and lampposts.
Cold water and cold attitudes at JS Moroka hospital
By Ufrieda Ho – For five days after 18-year-old Kekeletso Kikilame had given birth, she could not wash herself or her newborn, as there was no hot water at the Dr JS Moroka Hospital in the Free State.
No water in QwaQwa – how do hospitals keep working?
By Ufrieda Ho – A storm brews overnight and the heavens open with hours of endless rain. Each drop is a welcome respite for the locals of QwaQwa where the taps had been running dry for more than eight months by the middle of May this year.
Robbed of their hospital in an National Health Insurance pilot district
By Ufrieda Ho – The “bus stop” and the “slaughterhouse” – these are the nicknames locals give for the Nketoane Hospital in Reitz and the Dihlabeng Regional Hospital Bethlehem.
Buthelezi EMS remains a problem and a mystery
By Ufrieda Ho – The Free State’s health care system – in tatters in so many places – also has one recurring nightmare: Buthelezi Emergency Medical Services, to whom public emergency services have been outsourced.
Welcome to the twilight zone: fear and abandonment in the Free State’s health system
By Mary-Jane Matsolo – Activist Mary-Jane Matsolo last year heard “saddening and horrific” stories from the more than 50 people who testified during the People’s Commission of Inquiry into the Free State Healthcare System. She recently entered the field to assess whether anything had changed. These are her notes.
When a good idea becomes good news: adherence clubs in the Free State
By Ufrieda Ho A simple well-managed idea is not only easing pressure on the Free State health care system and making HIV-positive patients’ lives easier – it also seems to…
Won the battle, lost the war
By Marcus Low & Lotti Rutter – In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, the high price of antiretroviral medicines meant many lives were unnecessarily lost. While the global AIDS movement managed to force lower prices for key ARVs, the wider battle has not yet been won.