(C) World Health Organization
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South Africa bolsters its COVID-19 response [1]

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Date: 2023-01

Xhariep ‒ Vuyelwa Mnyameni fell ill with COVID-19 in June 2020. She remembers vividly how sick she was. “I just hung in there for the kids,” she says, recalling how she had to leave home to quarantine at one of Free State Province’s official sites for 15 days, far away from her family. When the COVID-19 vaccine became available nearly a year later, she was among the first to get it. “I said ‘you know what, the feeling I had last year, I don’t want to be there again’,” she says. “For my body to be well and fight back – I didn’t even waste time in getting it. I was just happy it was there so I could take it.”

She has completed her primary vaccination series and is visiting Mamello primary health care clinic to get her booster dose, as well as her three-month-old baby girl’s scheduled childhood immunization. The mother of two is on maternity leave and will return to her job as an administrative clerk in the district’s main hospital.

Mamello clinic is in a far-flung rural area in the Xhariep District of Free State Province, hours away from the main city. It is a one-stop shop for clients to receive a range of primary health care services, including COVID-19 vaccination. “We deliver all the services to the rural community that are found in a facility in town. We make sure that the rural area is also getting them,” says Ntswaki Lephokwane, a nurse at the facility. “The challenge here is that people are poor so there’s not much you can do about that, but by at least taking care of their health – that is something.”

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[1] Url: https://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus-covid-19/south-africa-bolsters-covid-19-response

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