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In Mpumalanga, Right to Care is supporting the CCMT-accredited Shongwe Hospital. The site is less than 10km from the border with Swaziland. It is on the western side of the Nkomazi River and falls under Nkomazi sub-district. The area has a hot sub-tropical climate.
Right to Care is supporting the site with human resource, data management, infrastructure, supplementary training, capacitating a referral system, and direct support for TB and HIV, adherence, and VCT.
Right to Care has seconded 13 staff members to the site, including doctors, a pharmacist, data manager and data capturers, a social worker, and counsellors. Lay counsellors have focused on the integration of TB and VCT at the site, thus improving TB diagnosis and referral.
Right to Care has renovated a clinic for the site that was completed in 2007 and is now in full operation. The renovated building was officially opened in October 2007. In February 2008, a mobile unit for outreach was purchased.
The clinic has seen a great increase in patients, with over 3500 patients in care and more than 2600 receiving treatment. This increase has prompted the identification of a down-referral site, Mzinti Clinic, close to the hospital. Down-referral started in January 2008 and by July of that year over 500 patients had been down-referred. Right to Care is supporting this down-referral site with three lay counsellors and a primary health care nurse. It has also supplied medical equipment.
Shongwe has 17 feeder clinics in the surrounding the area.
RTC has offered a number of staff, including those from the feeder clinics, training in subjects such as HIV management, VCT, Adherence, TB, STIs, and TB for Nurses.
The TherapyEdge database has been introduced at Shongwe. The system is linked online to central database in Johannesburg.
The CCMT clinic is headed up by Dr Precious Gabashane, Chief Medical Officer and Head of Department for CCMT Shongwe Hospital.
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