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Sukulwenkosi Dube Plumtree Correspondent
VILLAGERS in Macingwane area in Mangwe are constructing a $100,000 clinic in a bid to improve access to health services.
At the moment patients from the area are forced to travel about 20km to the nearest clinic in Empandeni. Project chairperson Bakhethi Nleya said the community started constructing the clinic in August last year and expected to complete it by the end of this year.
“The idea to come up with the clinic came from the community. Members from the Church of Christ, which is a church in our area, offered to help,” he said.
“The church assisted by providing experienced builders to help with the construction process. The community members are responsible for mobilising resources as well as providing manpower.”
Nleya said villagers were making monetary contributions towards procurement of building material every month.
“Each month a household provides money for a bag of cement, which costs about $12. Since this is a rural community not all families are able to make their contributions due to financial constraints. This, as a result, is delaying our progress in completing the clinic,” he said.
“We have managed to acquire some of the building materials like door frames and window frames. Those villagers who can’t raise money are assisting with manpower. They collect water, river sand and pit sand that we use.”
Nleya said the clinic was also going to have a maternity wing, a waiting room and a laboratory.
“The clinic is quite big as we want people to access all health services under one roof. The whole structure is worth about $100,000 excluding the cost of buying equipment and it has 16 rooms,” he said.
An excited villager Thenjiwe Ncube said locals were struggling to access health services.
“We don’t have a clinic in our area and it is difficult to reach the nearest health facility because of transport problems,” she said.
“We rely on scotch carts to get to the nearest clinic which is about 20 kilometres away.”
Ncube said a lot of people die along the way to health centres with pregnant women forced to give birth before reaching clinics.
derick.khumalo