No money to fix broken clinic, says health department

This mobile clinic parks outside of the Colchester clinic once a week because the building is not suitable to treat patients any longer. The Eastern Cape Department of Health says it would cost millions of rand – which it can’t afford — to refurbish the dilapidated building. Photo: Joseph Chirume

• The Eastern Cape Department of Health has admitted that the condition at the Colchester clinic is not fit for purpose.
• Patients complain that the building used for the weekly clinic is falling apart and has no electricity, water and toilets.
• The department says the weekly mobile clinic is sufficient to treat patients in the community.
• Department spokesperson, Siyanda Manana says it would cost millions of rand — which it can’t afford — to refurbish the dilapidated building.

The Eastern Cape Department of Health has admitted that the condition at the Colchester clinic is not fit for purpose. But says it would cost millions of rands – which it can’t afford — to refurbish the dilapidated facility.

Colchester is north-east of Gqeberha, near the Addo Elephant National Park. It is part of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality.

Patients say conditions in the building have been deteriorating and that no maintenance has been done since the Covid lockdown in 2020.

GroundUp visited the clinic in May 2024 after patients complained that the building used for the weekly clinic was falling apart and had no electricity. We found that there were broken windows and holes in the ceiling. There were no lights inside the prefabricated building and no running water, so patients walked to the community hall on the same property to use the toilet.

At the time, the department told GroundUp that the cost of refurbishing the building would be at least R1.7-million, which the department did not have.

We returned to the crumbling prefab structure on Wednesday and found the facility in a worse state. The ceiling had many holes while the windows were badly vandalised. The consulting room can only be opened and closed with a tablespoon being used as a door handle.

When we arrived, there were a handful of patients seated inside the prefab, waiting for nurses to arrive in the mobile clinic. The vehicle usually arrives at 10am, but patients say everyone is not assisted by the time nurses pack up by 3pm. Residents asked why the mobile clinic doesn’t come twice rather than once a week.

Another complaint was their struggle to get ambulances to come to Colchester, especially at night and over weekends. As a result, people have to pay to hire transport or hitchhike to the nearest health facility in Motherwell.

Resident Maria Julyan, who lives about ten minutes from the clinic, says she has to go home to use the toilet. She asked that the department fix the toilets, windows and the water infrastructure.

In a video shared on its WhatsApp group this week, department spokesperson, Siyanda Manana, reiterated that the clinic operated as a satellite clinic once a week with a mobile unit.

“The Colchester clinic operates as a satellite clinic due to the dilapidated state of the building. Assessment of the condition of the infrastructure was carried out by the Nelson Mandela Bay health infrastructure team in 2021. The cost to repair the building was R1.7 million.

“Then the office was unable to proceed due to budget constraints. Another request was made again to the provincial office to renovate the structure, but that did not happen in the 2024 plan because the amount jumped to R3-million, and the condition of the building had worsened,” he said.

The department did not respond to our additional questions by the time of publication.

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