By Asakhe Madlavu
St Mary’s DCC hosted a community wellness event honouring Nelson Mandela Day, dedicating 67 minutes of service to the Makhanda community.
The event offered healthcare services and educational resources to raise awareness around common illnesses. Guest speaker, Dr Marinus Jacob Swanepoel, shared that South Africa remains more exposed to HIV than many other countries, based on global statistics.
The event drew a large turnout, with support from the South African National Blood Service (SANBS), Fort England Hospital, the Association for Persons with Physical Disabilities (APD), Hospice, the Lebone Centre, and Grahamstown Dental. Services included pregnancy screening, blood pressure and diabetes testing, and breast and womb sonograms.
The Lebone Centre, a pre-school based in Tantyi and Suncity, showcased its support programmes for pregnant women and children, such as the “Every Baby Matters” and “Playmatch” initiatives.
Francine Mwepu from APD shared insight into the organisation’s long-standing impact: “The APD has been in existence for more than 25 years. It is a programme that supports and helps people living with disability and often gives away wheelchairs to people who struggle to get them. They have also teamed up with Rhodes University students who do psychology, train young people and mothers with children living with disability and create jobs for those living with disability in the organisation. They do home visits and give counselling to those living with disability and guardians too. If there are students doing research or studying people living with disability, they are more than welcome to join the APD programme at Cobden Street here in Makhanda.”
For many, the event provided access to services they would not ordinarily afford.
Nosiphokazi Moyikwa, a beneficiary, said, “The programme for me has been of great help, and since we are a disadvantaged community, some of the help that was offered we couldn’t get at our nearby clinics, and also it is quite expensive to visit a private doctor. As soon as I heard that there is going to be a private doctor, I felt relieved and took that opportunity to do a full body check-up.”
