The Sarepta clinic now has a more spacious pharmacy and extended TB room with its own waiting area. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, from left, are ward councillor Wouter de Vos, City health department area manager Professor Vera Scott, head of the personal primary health-care programme Theda de Villiers, community service and health portfolio committee chairperson Ronel Viljoen and clinic manager Leonore Fortuin Johnson.
Improvements to the Sarepta clinic will minimise the risk of exposing children to TB patients, says ward councillor Wouter de Vos.
The clinic reopened last Friday. It now has a more spacious pharmacy and an extended TB room with its own waiting area.
The City moved the bulk of the clinic’s operations to the nearby community hall in July last year before work at the facility got under way in March this year.
“The staff and clients can now enjoy the additions to the facility, which will not only improve service delivery but also increase the clinic’s capacity to assist clients,” said Ronel Viljoen, the portfolio committee chairperson for the City’s community services and health department.
Mr De Vos said: “This clinic not only has a facility for babies but also for patients with HIV and TB. The wonderful thing is that with the new physical layout of the facility, there is minimised risk of exposure of babies and infant toddlers to particularly TB which still remains a dreadful disease and something that we need to really take care of and manage well, especially in the Western Cape.”
In July, Nicky van der Walt, the provincial health department’s assistant director, told the provincial legislature’s health standing committee that 46 119 cases of TB had been diagnosed in the Western Cape from July 2021 to June this year with 4 156 TB-associated deaths over the same period.
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