The Role of Primary Health Care in the Central Regional Health Forum

The role of Primary health care in the central regional health forum

ROLE

The core objective role of Primary health Care is to provide comprehensive and essential health services to the community which include disease prevention, health promotion, curative health and rehabilitation services.  This is the gateway to healthcare system. It is the first contact by patients through which the healthcare can be assessed. In essence its primary role in this forum is to ensure that complications are avoided by managing patient holistically with prompt and appropriate referral. The PHCs should be positioned to manage common ailments and chronic clinical conditions while the district hospitals should manage acute conditions.

PROBLEM

According to the policy speech of the MEC health TB and HIV are the leading cause of death in the province. These are cases that could be managed effectively at the Primary health care with proper diagnosis and management at the PHC level. The lack of proper training by the personnel at this level leading to wrong diagnosis impact negatively on the outcome of health, lack of medicines at these facilities makes patients to prefer attending district hospitals, the lack of support by the district and regional hospitals in terms periodical visits to strengthen and support PHCs. The inefficiency of the emergency medical services EMS which makes patient to get to the next referral point very late. The absence of full functioning community based workers who need to do contact tracing and follow up of these patients in the community as most of them are chronic conditions.

PAST SUCCESS EVIDENCE BASED

Past successes as seen with the Grand multi-disciplinary outreach that was done in Joe Gqabi district early this year. The Community hospital supported the local clinics by ensuring regular outreach twice a week with a process flow of reviewing patients with their X-rays and blood results. This led to a drastic reduction in the number of patients we were seeing. The use of whatsapp technology assisted us tremendously as the cell phone numbers of our doctors were given to the clinic managers to call us and discuss any patient they are not comfortable with and also if there was a need for a picture of the condition to be sent for advice and management. An imbizo was done in the community with the active participation of home affairs, SASSA AND Social development which was very successful.

SOLUTION

The way forward is to work together as a team which include the CHWs, Professional nurses, medical practitioners both public and private, District hospitals, Regional hospitals and the Emergency medical services. The community leadership should be involved in the oversight function of the PHCs with information at their disposal they would be able to cascade the functions and referral pathway to the larger community.

OBJECTIVES

The intended objective of this concept document in terms of how these solutions can save money and prevent health issues .This would go a long way to build a vibrant network among all stakeholders, reduce litigations, efficient and effective utilisation of state resources, avoidance of unnecessary referrals and the regional hospitals can actually concentrate on the core services of rendering specialised care to the clients