Taking place under the banner of the Black Sash in partnership with the University of Cape Town’€™s (UCT) Health Economics Unit and Health-e News Service, the provincial health workshops will travel to all provinces in South Africa culminating in a report which will be shared with Government once public consultations are held on National Health Insurance (NHI).

A presentation by UCT’€™s Professor Di McIntyre revealed that the province has the least number of doctors working in the state health sector with big swathes of rural areas having little or no access to private, district or provincial hospitals.

The province also has the fourth highest poverty level (38%) of all provinces: compared with the national  average of 33%.

North West has a higher than average rural share (third highest) with 58% of the province’€™s population living in rural areas compared to the South African average of 43%.

The province was praised for its attempts to reach rural communities using mobile clinics although this was still insufficient.

Common problem areas identified by the more than 75 participants, representing all the districts, included chronic drug shortages, understaffed clinics, a lack of ambulances, lack of confidentiality at health facilities, a failure to acknowledge community health workers, non-existent monitoring of staff and uncaring attitudes by staff, especially nurses.

‘€œNurses don’€™t want to recognise community health workers. We walk in the dust and the sun to reach patients, but when we get to the clinic we are not even acknowledged. They train us, but then they don’€™t take care of us,’€ said a participant.

Non-governmental organisations working with HIV patients said although there were not many instances of antiretrovirals running out, many patients lived far from sites where the drugs were dispensed and could not afford the transport money to travel to the facilities.

Community health workers said there was a chronic shortage of TB drugs and medication for high-blood pressure.

Workshops have already taken place in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, the Western Cape and NorthWest. The next workshop is in Mpumalanga in December.