Transnet Foundation

'Good, clean health' on rails

'Good, clean health' on rails

Posted By: Transnet Foundation

20.04.2017

FOR nine months of every year, Phelophepa I and II travel the country, spending one or two weeks at 40 stations countrywide reaching almost 400 000 underprivileged people through its on-board and community outreach programmes.

'Good, clean health' on rails image

FOR nine months of every year, Phelophepa I and II travel the country, spending one or two weeks at 40 stations countrywide reaching almost 400 000 underprivileged people through its on-board and community outreach programmes.

 FOR nine months of every year, Phelophepa I and II travel the country, spending one or two weeks at 40 stations countrywide reaching almost 400 000 underprivileged people through its on-board and community outreach programmes.

Last month, Phelophepa II began its 35-week journey in Nelson Mandela Bay, docking at Swartkops Station (January 23 to February 3). The train will remain in the Eastern Cape until March 17, before travelling on to the Free State, North West Province and the Western Cape.

Phelophepa (pronounced pay-lo-pe-pa), means “good, clean health” in Tswana and Sotho dialects. It takes the form of health, dental and visual screening, and basic health education, in state-of-the-art on-board facilities for thousands of people who would not ordinarily have access to these services.

“There are no doctors on the train,” Transnet Foundation’s operations manager for Phelophepa Onke Mazibuko said.

“Phelophepa follows a primary health care model. It has dentists and oral hygienists, psychologists and counsellors, nurses, pharmacists, optometrists and optical dispensers. They are mostly final- year students or interns.”

tence since 1994 and with more than 40 permanent staff and numerous volunteers, the train is more than a mobile hospital.

It also provides outreach and educational programmes and has reached more than 20 million people thus far, making it the world’s biggest mobile clinic.

It does not compete with or replace available health care services, instead it complements those services and aims to assist communities, who cannot afford health care and often experience barriers to access public health services.

Over the next nine months, just more than 60 health sciences students from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) will be joining the 1 250 final-year students from across the country. They will be working alongside trained professionals to bring primary health care to the communities, gaining invaluable practical experience in the process.

NMMU’s Community Development Unit heads up the “social mobilisation” aspect of Phelophepa in the Eastern Cape, which involves setting up local organising committees at each station, to prepare for the arrival of the train and ensure the entire process runs smoothly, and has the maximum impact. It is the only university that manages this function.

Read the entire supplement on the Phelophepa Train that appeared in the Eastern Province Herald here.

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