Faranani clinic is an HIV-treatment clinic situated on the Natalspruit Hospital premises.

The clinic had been working in partnership with Right to Care since September 2007. Right to Care mainly supports the adult HIV treatment programme, primarily providing support in the form of staff resources and infrastructure improvements.

Before the Right to Care’s involvement the clinic was run by only two doctors with close to 5000 patients currently on the programme. Through the Right to Care’s support the clinic now has additional two doctors, two PHCN nurses, phlebotomist, pharmacist, pharmacist assistant, social worker, two admin assistants, data manager and five data capturers, and five counsellors.

The newly established and renovated pharmacy with pharmacist and pharmacy assistant, computerised dispensary and patient management system was once a run-down meeting room.

The data capturing unit is catching up with the back-log of patient information in the newly renovated and fully equipped data capturing room. Soon to be introduced is TherapyEdge, a computerised, innovative clinical information system specific to HIV disease management.

Air conditioners were installed throughout the clinic. This is to help with the hot temperatures the clinic used to experience during the summer months as a result of the design of the building. Right to Care has also equipped the clinic with UV lights for the control of TB bacteria, a common opportunistic infection in HIV positive patients.

New cervical cancer programme has been recently introduced. The immunosuppression caused by HIV means that woman living with the virus are at an increased risk of developing cervical cancer.
Regular screening, and early detection and treatment is imperative to continuing health of HIV-positive woman in the community.

The Cervical cancer dedicated doctor, Bridget Goeieman, holds a view of the increase of awareness and willingness of the patients to test for cervical cancer. Dr Goeieman said, “When the programme was first introduced the clinic needed to approach and convince woman to test. Now patients from all surrounding areas are coming in, asking to be tested. Some are being referred by nearby clinics lacking the resources or the expertise to do the testing or to deal with the infection.”

The site’s project manager, Sr Rachel Mothopeng, a Department of Health’s staff member, said, “All these services assist in providing quality comprehensive care and treatment management programme to all HIV-positive individuals, thus increasing the total quality of the treatment provided”.” Experts are always available to monitor and advise on drug side effects. The patients are tested, counselled, checked by the doctor, receive their ARV-drugs, have their blood tests taken, and receive their blood tests results, all in one location. This decreases the lost to follow up rates, and increases adherence and successful treatment of the patients.”

One of the main challenges the clinic is currently facing is the uneven flow of patients, resulting in “some days being busier than others”. There are approximately 500 patients walking though the clinic daily, most of who are stable and are here for a check up and collection of their ARVs. By down referring these, the clinic can work more efficiently and concentrate on initiating new patients.
With the introduction of Therapy Edge, the management of patients and visits will also improve; resulting in more evenly distributed patient flow.