Recently the Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Health and Social Development in the City of Johannesburg, Councillor (Cllr) Ennie Makhafola, conducted oversight visits to the Mofolo South Clinic in Soweto and Zandspruit Clinic in Roodepoort.
During the oversight visits, the MMC assessed the state of the healthcare facilities while carrying out her laptop handover and cleanup campaigns. Launched on 29 June 2023 at Alexandra 4th Avenue Clinic in Region E, the laptop distribution campaign is aligned to the City’s E-health programme that promotes the transfer of health resources and health care by electronic means. The laptop handover campaign will spread across all seven regions.
The E-health aims for delivery of health information, for health professionals and health consumers, through the Internet and telecommunications. Furthermore, it is about using the power of IT and e-commerce to improve public health services.
The laptop distribution campaign is aiming for nurses in all the City’s clinics to be capacitated with the necessary equipment to enhance their quality of service to communities. Meanwhile, the cleanup campaign creates awareness within communities to keep their surroundings clean, particularly within clinic surroundings.
“As a young person and a professional nurse, and following our Nurses’ Imbizo earlier this year, I know the challenges that face our nurses daily. I want to extend our gratitude not only to the nurses, but to all healthcare workers who contribute great service to our people. These laptops not only express our gratitude for the hard work of our nurses, but they will also benefit our patients by exempting them from long waiting periods in long queues due to tedious file retrieval processes,” said the MMC, explaining that accessing patient files digitally through the laptops would take less time and would address the issues of patient files that often go missing.
The MMC further explained that the laptops would enable digitisation of patient bookings and consultations, while empowering nurses to use the laptops to advance their studies.
“The City of Joburg is a Smart City and as the City’s Department of Health and Social Development, we want to ensure that we adapt to a digital approach to healthcare service,” said the MMC.
Isaac Morake, representing the IPPR, highlighted the significance of the day’s proceedings in promoting going paperless, going green and being friendly to nature and also highlighted the department’s digital programmes already underway. “We now have daily data capturing (DDC), a system that captures data live in real-time on the national database. We also have E-health and the Health Patient Registration System (HPRS). We are moving with the times into a paperless future,” said Morake.
Addressing the nurses and staff following her cleanup campaign at the recently refurbished Zandspruit Clinic, the MMC commended the improvement that had been done to the facility and said it was important to create a healthy and conducive working environment for nurses.
“We have committed to bringing change, especially around the shortage of resources. To this end, we are expediting efforts for the supply of medical equipment to address the issue of resource shortage at our clinics. We plead for your patience, as you can see, we are doing something. We look forward to an improved health fraternity and that change begins with us. We need to bring back the dignity of nurses,” said the MMC.
She further confirmed that for the current financial year, R10 million has been allocated to provide sanitary towels at all the City’s clinics as from August this year. “We will work tirelessly to improve the standard of our clinics,” said the MMC urging the nurses to guard against refuse dumping around the clinic.
Executive Director for the City’s Department of Health, Mr Mosiane, said that the department was in great hands under the leadership of MMC Makhafola. “Let us be grateful to MMC for working hard to ensure that the City performs better. We are a department that’s working better under the leadership of the MMC. Let us all rally behind her, support her and do our best to improve our healthcare services to our communities,” said Mosiane.
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