Groot Aub residents' health on the line
No permanent doctor or ambulance and only three nurses who have to serve almost 20 000 people.These are only residents of Groot Aub and exclude residents of nearby settlements such as Kransnes and Stinkwater. An ambulance that does stop here must also serve residents of Dordabis, which means that it sometimes takes hours or even a day to transport someone who is seriously ill to Windhoek.
Complaints raised over and over again on Thursday by residents who sat from early in the morning waiting to see a group of Egyptian medical experts and specialists during a day visit to the town, ranged from birth control and chronic medication that are often unavailable to a struggle to get help at the clinic over a weekend and after hours.
Covid-19 hit the town hard with many people losing their lives, but no tests are done locally and the toll-free Covid-19 number must be called. However, vaccinations have been carried out here.
Louis Green (59) was diagnosed with Covid-19 in December last year and spent two weeks in Windhoek Central Hospital. He is short of breath and has a bad cough, and complains about the “acid pills” that do not work.
“I sleep for five minutes and then I wake up. My breath catches and the acid burns around my throat.”
Louis is a part-time worker in the construction industry, but has no work at the moment. Temporary work in the town is scarce and those who come to build here prefer to bring their own workers. If his pills are not available at the clinic, he must go to Windhoek or Rehoboth “with a hike, and no one rides for free, you have to pay”.
His acid pills are not in stock and breathing “burns like fire”.
Gene Coetzee (58) is also in the industry and suffers from severe back pain. His health passport was damaged by rain and he no longer has a health card.
He says that while X-rays showed nothing was wrong, he “feels the pain, especially in the rain and cold”.
To seek medical help in Windhoek means unemployed Gene needs to pay N$100 for the round-trip bus ride and then another N$50 “because you have to eat too”. The bus also only drops them off at a petrol station in the capital, which means they have to take a taxi to and from the hospital.
“Where do you get that money if you do not have it?”
Isabella Urikhos (36) says that as of January there are no contraceptives available. “They [nurses] do not say a word, so we do not know when it will come again.”
According to her, she has to collect tuberculosis (TB) pills for her daughter every other week, but often “the line is too long” and there is no one who can help them.
The clinic is open from Monday to Friday from 08:00 to 17:00 and it costs N$10 for the pills, something that many residents simply do not have. The wait is sometimes all day, only to sit down again tomorrow if you have not been helped. If it is after 17:00, allegedly the patient must first report to the “security” at the clinic, who would then decide “whether you can enter or not”.
On weekends, residents who need medical help must first “call the nurse on duty at their homes” and “they are so slow and only look at certain cases. Chronic diseases are not helped at all.”
For chronic medication that is not available, “you just have to wait”, because not everyone has the money to buy it at a pharmacy in Rehoboth.
A resident who has to take epilepsy pills every month, says she is forced to “hike” to Windhoek to get the pills at a state hospital for N$15.
According to her, the nurses at the clinic work “very slowly”.
Groot Aub's council.lor for the Windhoek rural constituency, Piet Adams’ defence as to why the town does not have its own doctor and ambulance after so many years, is that research must first be done. According to Adams, a task force has been formed to report on 4 June.
“We must first identify the need. Not many residents work, it is a poor community. Many cannot afford medical services from their pension.”
He also referred to the issue of gender-based violence in the town with a doctor who is not available here to fill out the form that the police require to file a case. “The person must now first go to a doctor in another town and then return to Groot Aub to make a case.” - [email protected]