On Monday 12th November, we officially opened our 4th Infectious Diseases Clinic in the Western Cape.

Heideveld CHC serves a population of approximately 35 000 people who live in Heideveld, Welcome Estate, Vanguard Estate, Manenberg, Surrey Estate, Primrose Park, and Tambo Village.

Apart from ARV services, Heideveld CHC offers basic antenatal care, chronic and curative services, disability grant assessments, social work counselling, health promotion, emergency, contraception and sterilisation services. Minor theatre cases, medical male circumcision, pharmaceutical services, nutritional services, radiography, physiotherapy, dental Services, mental health services and school health services are also offered.

Heideveld CHC’s ARV Services started two years ago, after G.F.Jooste decanted all its ARV patients to the site. In April 2010 the patients remaining in care was a total of 940, compared to April 2011 where the total was 1,314 registered as remaining in care. This facility, even though it experienced many challenges, still managed to enrol more than three hundred new patients in care over this twelve month period. The facility faced major consultation space constraints.

Our Foundation was approached to investigate this issue and come up with a viable short term solution. We decided that the best approach was to provide the facility with a new unit to treat Infectious diseases. This unit was designed to accommodate the increase in patients utilising the facility as well as keeping the design centred on airborne diseases and preventing cross-contamination between patients and staff. We built and fully equipped an 8 roomed Infectious Diseases Unit. In addition to this the new unit has a ventilation system installed in all the rooms and TB filter lights to stop any chance of cross infection. With an annual increase of 300 – 400 patients, it was critical that we completed this project in the shortest possible time and thanks to our amazing donors we did.