The Clinic is part of the COPC (Community Oriented Primary Care) project that UP has in cooperation with the Department of Health in informal settlements.

UP supplies a medical doctor and Dietician and 6 Community Health Workers (CHW), who serve at the clinic every Wednesday morning from 7:30 to 12:30. LIFT employs 2 CHW’s as well as a medical sister that provides a family planning service for the women of the two villages on Thursday mornings from 8:00 to 11:00 at the Woodlane Village Clinic. LIFT provided 3 containers where the services are delivered and manages the clinic. The LIFT employees also support the UP team on Wednesdays and the LIFT medical sister trains both the LIFT and UP CHW’s every Tuesday morning from 8:00 to 10:30 based on the Department of Health’s training for CHW’s.

The UP CHW’s focus on Woodlane Village and Cemetery View (another informal settlement not far from Woodlane Village), and do household assessments in the Villages using the AITA system where data is captured on smartphones. The LIFT CHW’s focus mainly on mothers and children and do ante and post-natal assessments. Each Community Health Worker works 25 hours per week and apart from their focus area within either LIFT or UP, all of them also follow up on patients, share critical health information, and assist in the running of the clinic.

The Health Professional employed by LIFT Community Development works 20 hours per week. She is responsible for managing the clinic, the medication, family planning, patient follow-up with all the CHW’s, training, and acts as the CHW supervisor and mentor.

Patient’s details, diagnosis and medication are captured on the national system called “Synaxon”. LIFT has finalized a POPIA policy that was approved by the Board of Directors and has registered information officers according to the POPIA Act. All patients are required to give their consent for their personal information to be stored at the clinic and registered on Synaxon.

The services that are provided at the clinic are basic medical care, dietetics (children under 6 years are weighed and measured), family planning and HIV testing and counselling.

Since the clinic focuses on basic primary care and screening only, many patients are referred to Pretorius Park Clinic or Tshwane District hospital. We are not able to supply chronic medicine, ARV’s, draw blood, test sputum etc. All pregnant women are also referred. We help malnourished children with supplementation for a month and then they are also referred to Pretorius Park for further supplementation.

Twice a year UP and LIFT organize a health day for the children of Woodlane Village six years and younger where the children are weighed, measured, iron tested, and Vitamin A and deworming are given and immunization done in cooperation with Pretorius Park Clinic.

LIFT also provides birth classes for pregnant mothers as well as a support group for mothers with new babies. The sessions include baby massage, stimulating your baby’s growth, breastfeeding and other applicable content for new mothers. LIFT provides a baby bag with essential items for each mother that attends a follow-up session and breastfeeding assessment with the medical sister as well as a food parcel for each mother that attends the birth class.

LIFT also has a fund that helps patients in need with emergency transport, transport to hospitals and clinics and clinic fees.

From 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 a total of 2041 patients visited the clinic. Since the clinic opened on 8 February 2017 until 31 March 2020 a total of 9175 patients have been helped.