Looking
back over the past year, it has been amazing to look at the road well-travelled
that Project HOPE South Africa has been on. Our clinic celebrated its one year
anniversary this month and has gone through some remarkable changes. What we
were doing, whilst so good a year ago seems so amateur compared how we run the
clinic now!
As
I reflect back, it makes me so proud to see how our staff have learnt new
skills with limited education and no previous background in working in a clinic.
We now have a team that can take blood pressures, run state of the art
laboratory equipment to analyze blood results, provide counseling to patients
on the various medications that they are taking, manage a pharmacy. The list
goes on and on.
Not
only that but our list of services is slowly but steadily increasing as our
reputation increases. We manage the governments’ case load of diabetic and
hypertensive patients in the community. We are able to treat them for all their
minor ailments, provide HIV and TB testing, and have recently expanded to
provide cervical cancer and prostate screening as well as expanding our family
planning services.
On
the community side of the program over 7,500 community members in Zandspruit
have been screened for diabetes and hypertension. Project HOPE is visible in
the community. The word is getting out there and more and more people are
turning to us for their health care needs. Challenges still remain. Diabetes
and hypertension has not gotten the press that HIV did and many people do not
view these diseases as serious, at least not at the beginning when the signs
and symptoms as few. We are working hard over the coming months with focus
groups to analyze our communications strategy to make sure that we communicate
the correct message to the community.
For
me it has been an amazing personal journey. Starting this project from the back
of my house with an idea, to trying to conceptualize it, and then make it a reality,
whilst extremely frustrating and high stress at times, has been totally worth
the effort.
So its both sad and exciting for me at the same time to let you
know that I have now left South Africa and am starting a similar journey of
discovery in the US which I will be no doubt be blogging about.
We
have found a wonderful replacement for me here, and the new person will be
introduced shortly and will start most likely towards the end of the year. The
team appreciates your continued support. Keep checking back and seeing how the program
unfolds over the coming months and years. I certainly will be! - Stefan
