BOTHO MOLOSANKWE and VUYO MKIZE
I T IS A three-room shack with no electricity, no running water and a pit toilet enclosed with corrugated iron. The only furniture is two bunks, a hospital bed, a cupboard and a table.
Despite this, the clinic has been serving the Freedom Park community since 1996.
Sinenhlanhla Private Clinic is the only one in the area. It is run by two local “nurses”, whose names are known to The Star.
While they refer to themselves as sisters, and even look the part with their neat blue uniforms, they have never been to nursing school. The only qualification they have is home-based care training.
The doctor who owns the clinic practices full time at his Leondale surgery and goes to Sinenhlanhla every Friday to drop off medicine, collect money and see patients.
Despite their lack of training, the two “sisters” diagnose patients, prescribe medication, dress wounds, administer birth control, check for high blood pressure, offer HIV counselling, test for HIV/Aids, write sick notes and make referrals to hospitals.
One of the three rooms in the shack has a bed and a small cabinet, where penicillin, birth-control medication in liquid and tablet form, and HIV/Aids testing materials are stored.
On Friday, The star accompanied members of the SA Nursing Council (SANC) and police to Freedom Park to shut down the clinic, because it was illegal and the work done by the “nurses” was endangering the public.
Advocate Job Malobola, senior manager of legal affairs at SANC, said a qualified person needed to give birth-control injections. A patient could be paralysed if it was not injected correctly.
“When we asked the nurses how they knew where to inject, they said they just divided the buttocks into four parts,” Malobola said.
“When the person comes, they refer back to their files and see which part of the buttock they injected the last time, so that they don’t inject there again.”
The nursing council became aware of the clinic’s existence after a security company alerted them when an employee who had failed to show up for work returned with a sick note bearing the clinic’s name.
At the time, Sinenhlanhla was owned by a Diepkloof woman, who the council contacted. It is still not clear how the current doctor-owner came to take over the clinic in May last year.
The former owner, whose qualification has still to be determined, is alleged to have made a huge bonfire with all her patients’ records when she handed over the clinic.
Residents who frequent Sinenhlanhla were devastated at its closure. Tears ran down the face of one 46-year-old woman.
“I like it here because their injections work and heal me, and I don’t even mind paying. I would rather go home now because I can’t go to Eldorado Park… They will turn me back,” she said.
The clinic’s two staff members also cried when the source of their R3 000 a month income was shut down.
The one “nurse” is a single mother of one child, and also takes care of her sisters’ five orphans and two other children. The other has one child.
They said nursing was their passion, but they did not have money to enrol at a nursing school.
Erasmus said she would ensure the women got proper training. Also, the council would not charge them as they were not nurses.
The doctor, who arrived at the clinic to find police swarming the place, said he was not aware the two “nurses” he employed were not qualified. The previous owner had told him she had trained them.
All three were taken to Eldorado police station, and the medication and equipment was confiscated.
l A man and woman arrested for operating an illegal pharmacy and dispensing medicine without a valid licence have been granted bail.
Joseph Manaka, 39, and 20-year-old employee Dineo Tabola appeared in the Protea Magistrate’s Court last week on charges of possession of medication without a valid licence and possessing stolen property.
Naledi police officers had swooped on the Merafe pharmacy and clinic after receiving an anonymous tip-off from the public and arrested the pair.