One to One Mobile Clinic

The mobile clinic is now up-and-running in remote communities in the Eastern Cape. It is delivering services to 80–120 people each day. It operates Monday to Thursday and visits 20 communities in one month. On Friday, it is deep-cleaned. On a number of occasions, the mobile clinic visits community events over the weekend, for example, we were invited to attend a recent football tournament where dozens of men unexpectedly came forward for healthcare. As a result, the clinic has already provided services to over 2,000 men, women, and children.

It is the first mobile clinic to provide the full suite of HIV care and management – within this one mobile clinic, people can be tested, know their status, be initiated onto ART (HIV treatment), collect their ART, and receive access to counselling and support.

In other centers, the testing and setup can be from mobile testing centers, but medication needs to be collected from a physical clinic. As a Department of Health registered clinic, it can dispense a range of different medications.

We are collecting all the necessary health data to feed into the Department of Health information system, which will be a vital part of evaluating the impact of the clinic and building relationships with the Department of Health for future collaboration or adoption.

The aim of the mobile clinic is not to replace government services but to develop an effective model that can be taken up at the government level.