Glebelands kids: growing up on the frontline
The ongoing political motivated killings in Glebelands Hostel in Umlazi has claimed many lives and left families in disarray. Children are among the ones most affected by the violence.
Health
After Grenfell, the UK government faces urgent demands for more regulation and fewer fire service cuts
More than two months since one of the worst disasters in modern British history and the fallout from London’s Grenfell Tower fire continues to have […]
Careworkers demand better working conditions
Care workers are classified by their employers as volunteers and not employees. As such, the proposed minimum wage does not cover them. They get paid less than R2,000 a month. If they fall pregnant, women are forced to quit their jobs or take unpaid leave.
Organisations and government disagree on decriminalisation of sex work
The recent debate on the decriminalisation of sex work, organised by Mail and Guardian and the South African National Aids Council (SANAC), provided no solution but a screaming match between those supporting it and those against.
22 people share a toilet in Ekurhuleni
After years battling to get basic services, residents of L&J (Lloyd and Johan) an informal settlement near St Georges Hotel in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg, […]
The appalling state of hostels in Alexandra township
Alexandra Hostel dwellers and elsewhere in the City of Johannesburg are pinning their hopes on the new City’s administration led by the coalition of […]
Anger and shock deaths of mental patients
A recent report by the Health Ombudsman paints a poor picture of the state of mental health facilities and management in South Africa. While the […]
Refugee woman’s struggle for access to chronic medication
Despite the ongoing xenophobic attacks on African, an HIV positive woman claims that she was turned away at the hospital because she is a refugee […]
Long queues at health centres frustrate chronic patients
The night before David Mashaba (64) needs to go for his monthly checkup and collect his medication at the Gugulethu Clinic, he sets his alarm to 4am in order to get to the City-run clinic by 5.30.
Even though the clinic only opens at 7, there is already a long queue of people lined up before sunrise in the hope that, by being among the first in line, they’ll get out by 3pm, indicative of the achingly slow administrative and medical processes due to the high number of patients and low number of staff at the clinic.
Forced to sign with Smart Purse
An outsourced company has been failing careworkers in Gauteng.
After protesting for three months against their employment being outsourced by the Gauteng Department of Health, community health care workers including those in Alexandra said they have given up the fight.
They eventually decided to sign up with the outsourced company, Smart Purse, because they were locked out and not allowed to work.
Frontline Community Health Workers kept in the dark
In a country that has the biggest divide between public and private healthcare, community careworkers are not recognized as employees and do not enjoy labour rights and the protection of SA’s labour laws.
In a gloomy room in a cinder block RDP house so cramped there is barely enough space to move his wheelchair, Masixole Sosikela, 29, looks as if he is part of the furniture.
Sosikela lost the use of his legs in a car accident three years ago and has since been confined to the small house he shares with his mother and young brother. With his mother at work and his brother at school, he spends his days alone in the house in BM Section, Greenpoint, Khayelitsha. His only daytime visitor is home community health worker, Nikezwa Bara, who comes to see him three times a week. She spends about an hour with him, washing and dressing his bedsores, emptying his catheter and changing his linen. Bara also prepares him something to eat in the kitchen and wheels him outside to enjoy a bit of sunshine.
Bara is one of 106 community health workers (CHWs) in Khayelitsha who offer essential health and social services to over 1,000 patients who are bed-ridden or chronically or terminally ill. For these patients, the CHWs are a lifeline of care and company.
Mineworkers could be compensated with billions
The recent High Court judgement certifying mineworkers suffering from silicosis and TB as a class has been welcomed by mining unions, jurists and mine workers.
The South Gauteng High Court ruled against 29 respondent gold mining companies allowing a class action suit by thousands of workers suffering from the fatal lung disease, silicosis and co-related tuberculosis.
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