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          Mobile Clinics Bring Health Care to South Africa Countryside

   by Emilie Iob

   South Africa has a serious lack of healthcare facilities in rural
   areas. In many cases, people must walk for kilometers to reach the
   closest clinic. But some new solar-powered mobile clinics are changing
   that.
   Women have been waiting outside a seven-meter-long trailer since the
   early hours of the morning to register with this portable medical
   clinic.  Once they do, they can get free tests and check up on their
   health. In a mother and baby unit, women can learn their pregnancy
   status and have an ultrasound, as well as getting tests for blood
   pressure and diabetes.
   Nchaupe Mathosa is a member of a partner NGO and is volunteering today.
   "Most people travel for miles to the clinics or looking for assistance,
   so basically once you bring a unit like this toward the rural people or
   the people who are in need, it would be very important to have it
   close-by."
   The mobile clinic is an initiative by Samsung Electronics. The company
   has funded four solar-powered mobile clinics, each of them specialized
   for health needs such as eye care, dental care or malaria testing.
   The solar panels, combined with batteries, allow the trucks to operate
   24 hours a day - in theory.
   Kea Modimoeng, Samsung Africa's corporate citizenship manager, said,
   "In some instances, you have a clinic which is well run by an NGO, but
   they lack these kind of specialized services. We then bring in the
   trucks to give it as an add-on service, which is very integral to the
   healthcare provision."
   The company partners with various aid groups, universities and local
   governments to know where to position its trucks. The project is still
   in its infancy, though, and sometimes misunderstandings happen. Like
   today, when neither Samsung nor the partner NGO brought medical gloves
   or stethoscopes.
   "The unit is quite good. It's got a lot of things. It's got solar...
   but some of the basic things like gloves, working material was not
   actually readily available," said Mathosa.
   For Annah Mushwena, it was worth waiting. She initially went to the
   clinic to find out her pregnancy status, but she also got tested for
   diabetes, which she knew little about before.
   "I just heard about it, but to be honest, the detail, how does it work,
   how does it prevent it, I was not even sure about it. But as from
   today, I can even explain to you how it works," she said.

   The project will be fully launched at the beginning of next year with
   two trucks touring in South Africa and others visiting countries across
   Africa. Samsung hopes to reach one million people in the rural parts of
   Africa by 2015.
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   [1]http://www.voanews.com/content/mobile-clinics-bring-health-care-to-s
   outh-africa-countryside/1788911.html

References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/mobile-clinics-bring-health-care-to-south-africa-countryside/1788911.html