Extra Projects

SHAWCO Rural Health

The Extra-Projects portfolio involves organising supplementary projects to the regular clinics that SHAWCO students run in various communities in the Western Cape.  In the past this has involved a weekend visit to Worcester/Vredenburg and a 10 day trip to the Eastern Cape where students, supervised by a qualified doctor, provided health care services from existing clinics that needed extra assistance or from a SHAWCO mobile clinic. The services provided focused on screening, such as PAP smears and HIV testing and counseling, but general complaints were also seen and treated.

The aim of the project is to provide health care services to areas that are in need of health care, for example if their nearby clinics need assistance, if there is no clinic in their vicinity or if the services we offer are currently unavailable to that community. We want to be careful not to duplicate services already in place or fill in gaps that should be filled by government projects. We also do not want to run these projects in areas where we normally run SHAWCO clinics, such as Khayelitsha or Noordhoek. The projects should thus provide services that are specifically needed in that community. The project is also a learning opportunity for students to be exposed to rural health care and multidisciplinary work (e.g. medical, health and rehabilitation students working together), as well as inter-sectoral collaboration (e.g. collaboration with engineering students).

The goals for 2011/2012 are to make these projects more cost effective. The past experiences have proven to be beneficial to the students involved, but we want to make sure that the money spent is providing the best possible benefit to the community too. The focus will also be more on our local communities, and developing relationships that will allow this to become a sustainable project.

SHAWCO Health and Rehabilitation

SHAWCO Health and Rehabilitation (H & R) is driven by a vision to increase accessibility by impoverished communities to holistic health services. Holistic management of the clients on our clinics, include the wonderful care provided by our Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy, Dietetics and Audiology students.  The emerging role that health and rehabilitation plays within the SHAWCO Health model can be seen to be aligned with the basic Primary Health Care principle of comprehensive healthcare. The integration of H & R services allow for the practice of an effective multi-disciplinary team (MDT), which is both a benefit to service users as well as service providers (student volunteers and supervisors/ clinicians). As H & R and medical students collaborate on these clinics, they are able to learn from each other and value the role of the various team members.  In addition, as students attend clinics, they are faced with the health care needs of impoverished communities and are challenged to offer contextually relevant services.  

The Audiology, Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Dietetics students attend ImiZamo Yethu Paediatric Clinic once a month. 

The Audiology division offers paediatric screening and hearing tests.

Speech and language therapy services include; speech health promotion, waiting room presentations, general screening of all children attending the clinics, in-depth screening of children displaying deficits in language and communication and provision of home programmes.

Attendance at clinics by Dietetics students is incorporated into their academic curriculum. The services which this division provides include; anthropometry and growth monitoring, health promotion presentations related to nutrition and nutritional counseling (relevant to SES and context). In 2011 the dietetics division expanded their service provision through attending Wednesday morning Paediatric Screening Clinics. A relationship is being built with UWC’s Dietetics department to provide similar services on the Du Noon clinic. 

The Occupational Therapy service on clinics includes; developmental screening and physical rehabilitation. Occupational Therapy students also attend the Du Noon Paediatrics Clinic, once a month.

All divisions ensure that follow-up or referrals occur to appropriate secondary or tertiary care where necessary.

SHAWCO Ophthalmology

The incidence of learning disabilities within the under resourced areas in the Western Cape has become more of a problem in recent years. Much of this is related to poor visual acuity of young children and thus this may permanently impact on their future, if not picked up early. SHAWCO Paediatrics has been in contact with the Department of Ophthalmic Nursing in order to liaise with the Department of Education to screen children for early eye problems. This project is being piloted at our SHAWCO Paediatrics Imizamo Yethu Clinic.

SHAWCO and the Dietician

Nutrition plays a critical role in maintaining a normal health status as well as in the management of individuals with a compromised health status. This obvious fact is reflected in the layout of the SHAWCO paediatric clinics; the first access point for the patients is the dietician’s room.

What we do:

Dieticians at SHAWCO are responsible for assessing the nutrition status of the patients, initially by assessing anthropometric dimensions of weight and height to name but a few and then comparing these measurements to come up with a nutritional diagnosis.

They also assess the patient’s food intake to get an impression of the baseline nutrition intake.

Depending of the diagnosis, the patients are counselled accordingly and in the required cases referred to a more suited health practitioner.

The dieticians are responsible for giving a easily understandable but scientifically sound address to the patients aimed especially at encouraging health promotion in nutrition.

The dieticians also work as part of a multi-disciplinary team aimed at providing all the SHAWCO patients with a holistic therapy for their ailments.

Benefits of taking part:

SHAWCO affords dietetic students the opportunity to practice theoretical knowledge being taught in classes.

It gives the student a more realistic view of the community’s health needs and forces the student to apply realistic nutrition advice relevant to the specific patient.

SHAWCO clinics are an excellent environment in which dieticians are able to have a first-hand experience working as multidisciplinary team as well as gain more knowledge about the specific roles of the other player in the team.

Advice given by the supervising dietician will enable the student dietician to improve their skills in offering dietetic therapy

It allows the student to practice and gain confidence in required dietetic skills

SHAWCO also provides one an opportunity to increase their future professional network through relationships built with other student health practitioners.

How to get involved:

You must be enrolled into a B.Sc. dietetics degree with HPCSA student registration

Contact the SHAWCO team and let them know of your interest to be part of this life altering experience.

Sign-up to take part in the clinics

Come along to a SHAWCO clinic

SHAWCO Dentistry

The Du Noon clinic identified the lack of oral health in the area of Du Noon as a major shortfall in the health system. SHAWCO Paediatrics has recently formed a partnership with the UWC School of oral health and we piloted our first combined health and dentistry clinic at Du Noon in August. The clinic was a great success and we saw over 100 patients. Our students really enjoyed the experience of seeing what dentists do. The integration between the future health professions is a stepping stone forward to a complete and holistic approach to health.