Local doctor provides free health care to less fortunate

A 39-year-old medical doctor has committed her life to give people in informal settlements access to free quality health care service. Senior medical officer and informal settlement health developer Dr Ellenore Meyer of the department of family medicine at the University of Pretoria is spearheading these informal settlement health projects.

For each community, health workers that live in the area are appointed and funds are raised to set up a clinic, usually converted from a container, to link household visits to free primary health care.

“I work with a wonderful team. Our core team includes a dietician and environmental health officer that travel with me to four informal settlement health sites in and around Pretoria.”

One such informal settlement that benefits from this initiative is Plastic View, where families can access a remote clinic set up at a nearby church every Wednesday.

The bulk of the people living at the informal settlement are undocumented which means accessing free primary health care services was often a challenge.

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“We follow a holistic and step-by-step community development approach.” The project has a three-phased approach which includes health, nutrition and education.

“We set up a kitchen where food is provided and regular nutritional assessments are done for mothers and children,” she said.

They also provide supplements to thousands of children. Through the UP’s student’s community engagement programmes, the communities are taught about the development of local food systems and how to set up vegetable gardens.

“We see the challenges of people in displacement, undocumented, the nameless and faceless generation, that we often get to not only know, but partner with and enable them to help themselves to access and work towards better health, nutrition and their own knowledge,” Meyer said.

Recently, the team launched a five-year community development and food security programme for the Cemetery View informal settlement through UP, SA Cares, the ARC and the Living Word Church.

“I love my work, but it can also be very challenging,” Meyer said. Recently, one of their community gardens was destroyed and the land was sold illegally.

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Meyer said they saw a lot of poverty and unemployment, even more now during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This has made us go beyond our normal ‘job description’ and I often do fundraising and seek more partners to support our community work as the government support for projects such as these are not able to meet all the needs,” she said.

“In the first winters in some of our programmes we have had children die due to malnutrition despite our supplementation and intervention.”

The pandemic saw Meyer and her team doing house calls where one night she saw a deaf patient having a panic attack. “She was far along in her pregnancy, stressed by the food insecurity and the uncertainty of how to care for her unborn,” she said.

“The same night I saw two more pregnant women, each with their own devastating stories.” She said what made her pray harder, work harder and dream bigger was seeing hundreds of women, sometimes under-aged, without an income or a hope of a better life.

“Because every life matters. And everyone should have access to health, education, nutrition and opportunity.”

Not just a philanthropist, but also a beauty queen, Meyer is participating in the Mrs SA competition and is currently part of the top 50.

“I love that it is more than a beauty pageant, it is a women’s empowerment movement. So relevant to my work.”

Her advice: “Dream big. Work hard. Give freely. Be kind to yourself. Hold on to your faith.

“Life is an echo, what you send out comes back,” she said.

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