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How the clinic is coping with Covid-19. October 2020
Just like everywhere in the world, 2020 is also a special year for the Healthy Mom and Baby Clinic due to the Corona virus. In March, South Africa went into a complete lockdown. Despite this lockdown, the clinic has been able to offer its most essential services. Other services, however, have been temporarily suspended in order to reduce the number of people in the clinic and mutual contact as much as possible. The HMBC has temporarily stopped group education, non-medical ultrasounds and home visits. Also, the mobile clinic has not traveled to the neighborhoods and the second-hand shop is temporarily closed.
From the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the clinic has proactively started to implement preventive measures for employees and clients. A major advantage of this was that the good Dutch guidelines for Covid-19 for midwives could be used and applied for the situation in South Africa. The situation in the Netherlands was just ahead of that in South Africa, and the clinic made good use of that. The number of infections rose sharply in the months of June and July. This put so much pressure on healthcare that hospitals and clinics around the HMBC had to (temporarily) close. There were often too many employees infected to continue care. This put enormous pressure on the HMBC. A delivery room has been set up, Margreet and Else have performed a number of home births, and a mobile phone has been set up for clients to be available 24/7. In addition, the clinic has started working in two separate teams: working twice as hard in the clinic for two weeks and then being home for two weeks. By splitting up into two teams, the clinic could always remain open! It has always had the highest priority to be able to continue to provide the most essential mother and child care. During this time, the team experienced even more how important their role is to the community. The clinic feels extremely protected and blessed. It is the only clinic in the region that has not had to temporarily close and no employee has been infected with the virus. They see this as God’s hand in and on the work the HMBC does.
The clinic is missing out on part of its income due to the corona measures. Some financial support has been withdrawn, often because those organizations have less income again. Thanks to donations from donors, the Turn The Tide Foundation has been able to make an additional contribution of €5,000 to compensate for the lost income. The people of the clinic are very grateful for the extra financial support that Turn The Tide. They want to thank every donor through this road for supporting this beautiful work.