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Centre for Children with Special Needs
Bertha Gxowa Hospital started the Centre for Children with Special Needs to deal with challenges that faced children with special needs, their mothers and care givers who were spending more than a day when visiting the hospital for services. Children with special needs were seen on one-on-one basis in the past which resulted in delays. Appointments were booked on the same day by different parents and caregivers. This became overwhelming with the high referral rate. Waiting periods grew longer and patients were seen less frequently. As a result, the Cerebral Palsy Clinic also known as the Centre for Children with Special Needs was established. Tags:
Date: 2026/01/23
Version: 0.1
Tags:
Public Health Solutions
Disability Intervention
Waiting Times Reduction
Multidisciplinary Approach to Healthcare
Linkage to Care
Community Based Services (CBS) are a critical tool in assuring the health of communities in resource poor settings. They have the tools to provide a comprehensive set of services which include nutrition, wound care, home based rehabilitation, adherence to therapy, palliative care and psychosocial support. They have been shown to reduce re-admission rates to hospital. There are 850 Community Health Workers and 62 registered nurses who provide CBS to the 1.1 million residents in the Klipfontein Mitchells Plain Substructure. The challenge is that these services are under-utilised due to administrative failures and inefficiencies in referring these patients. Less than 500 CBS referrals were completed in 2021. An informal audit revealed that contributory factors to low referrals included lack of staff awareness of available services, how to access these services, limited access to paper-based referral forms, limited administrative support to ensure paper forms were scanned/e-mailed and frequent scanner/computer failure. This meant that the limited referrals that were actually completed, often never reached the destination, to the detriment of the patient. It is for this reason that a Doctor at Mitchells Plain Hospital came up with a solution.
Date: 2025/08/19
Version: 0.1
Tags:
Public Health Solutions
Government In-house Solutions
Central Chronic Medication Dispensary and Distribution (CCMDD)
South Africa has experienced an unpredicted growth in patients requiring access to long term therapies driven in part by universal access to Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) and steady increases in patients with non-communicable diseases (NCD) requiring chronic therapy. There is an over extension of public sector health care facilities creating strain on available resources and has contributed towards medicine shortages and challenges in the quality of care provided. The experience of patients is one of protracted waiting times and often congested facilities. The CCMDD programme identified an opportunity to target the long term therapy category and provide an alternative, more convenient solution for stable patients to access chronic medicine. Prescriptions would be dispensed and packaged offsite, and delivered to pre-assessed external pick-up points (PuPs) to provide the patient with a location that may be nearer to their homes or work place and result in reduced transport costs and decrease the economic burden on the patient. Prescribing would be done by public health facilities and dispensing and PuP services would be offered through private contracted parties. An ICT system was developed to manage the data transfers through the value chain from prescription to patient collection.
Date: 2025/08/13
Version: 0.1
Tags:
Digital Health System
Pharmacy Innovation
Public Health Solutions