Oasis started the project in late 2007 by recruiting a group of unemployed community members to receive basic health training and conduct an assessment of health in the area. The groups work in the community and discussions with community leaders lead to the launch of the home-based care programme. Our experience in implementing the home-based care project soon presented the critical need for a primary health care service due to community members being unable to access treatment or preventative services. Over the past four years, the Oasis comprehensive community wellness project has grown into an integrated partnership that brings together our community, several governmental and non-governmental partners resulting in a combination of community-based care, follow-up and primary health care services that ensures significant progress towards our aim of reducing the incidence of HIV, preventing AIDS and empowering people to take responsibility for their own wellness. The project is focused on the informal settlement of Itsoseng and the RDP sections of Cosmo City which currently has no public clinic (90 000 people) and has the following components:
Clinic service
Home-based care, follow-up and care for vulnerable families
We believe that this comprehensive approach to community wellness would significantly improve the general well-being of our community over time. Our clinic has had a total of 13,828 visitors from March 2010 to June 2011 and has provided home-based care for around 100 people per month. This has been done a very low cost.
A major achievement has been the fact that we have had a 0% rate of HIV among babies whose mothers attended our antenatal clinic (all PCRs negative) – testifying to the effectiveness of combining clinical services with community-based follow-up.
Our Primary Health Care clinic in Itsoseng provides antenatal, family planning, voluntary counselling and testing, immunisation service and primary health care services in partnership with the City of Johannesburg Region C Department of Health. Oasis provide staff and facilities, while the laboratory services and medication is provided through the City of Johannesburg’s Zandspruit Clinic. We had a total of 10,618 visits to the clinic in the past year (February 2010 to January 2011). Our clinic runs four days per week (Monday – Thursday) from 7am to 1pm (antenatal care, family planning, immunisation, primary health care, HIV & TB testing and counselling). The statistics for visits to the clinic up to July 2011 is given below, first the total since February 2010 and then for each of the past two financial years (March 2010 to February 2011 and then March 2011 to July 2011).
Funded by the Gauteng Department of Health and Social Development, our community health workers provide community care and education services – referring clients to the clinic, following up clinic clients and serving as support staff at the clinic itself. Our Home-based care programme runs daily from 9am to 2pm, including health education, patient follow-up, treatment adherence, wound care, palliative care and general social work. Powder milk is also provided for HIV positive mothers, as well as basic food parcels for vulnerable families. Individually designed interventions to empower most vulnerable families (registration and ID, resolving of family disputes and advice) are also part of what our Community Health Workers deal will daily.
Meet Evelyn from our Community Wellness team.
Content goes here
1. Reduce the incidence of HIV from 33% to 20% by 2014 in Cosmo City and Itsoseng (using antenatal incidence as indication)
2. HIV mother to child transmission of less than 5% of HIV positive antenatal patients
3. Reduce household vulnerability through:
3.1 Comprehensive care programme for 100 at-risk babies and mothers per year
3.2 Targeted interventions of 60 households per year identified through our home-based care project
4. Provide empowering health education and community-based health services to 10,000 people (immunisation, family planning, antenatal, management of patients on HIV medication)
We’ll be posting videos introducing some of the Oasis Change Agents – people who live and work in our community and are committed to their own development and serving others. Arnie, who leads Oasis SA, introduces the series in this first video.
Rebecca Williams, a medical doctor who volunteers at our clinic, recently spoke on ‘Faith for healing’ at her church. You can listen to it on Junction Church’s website.
Cosmo City and the surrounding communities do not have any public health facilities, with the nearest public hospital being more than an hour’s drive away. Realising that she might be in labour, the lady undertook the journey early on Tuesday, 11 May, to hospital but was sent back due to the staff there thinking she was not yet.
She and her husband realised later in the day that she was indeed in labour and starting walking to try and find public transport to go to hospital. Someone in a car passing by saw them and, realising that they...
My name is Jo Riley and I am from the UK. I moved to South Africa in October 2009, as my husband works for Mission Aviation Fellowship and his current job is based here in Johannesburg. I am a Registered Nurse and was keen to get involved in nursing whilst living in Johannesburg.
On first hearing about the work of Oasis, I felt really excited to see if and how I could be involved. I willingly accepted the job of nurse, helping in the Friday clinic and also with Home Based Care. Little was I to know how much I was going to gain and not just...
