Case studies: South Africa

Hospice Matlosana – North West Province

HIV/AIDS is one of the greatest challenges facing southern Africa and the AngloGold Ashanti CSI Fund has acted in response to this, supporting many initiatives down the years. This is reflected in the statistics. Expenditure on HIV/AIDS projects in 2003 amounted to 7% of the funds available. This increased to 9% in 2004, 10% in 2005, 17% in 2006 and 22% in 2007. Hospice Matlosana in North West Province is a good example of the type of holistic approach to HIV/AIDS that the CSI Fund favours.

Established in 1990 in Klerksdorp to care for patients suffering from terminal illnesses in the KOSH (Klerksdorp, Orkney, Stilfontein and Hartebeesfontein) area and the surrounding townships of Jouberton, Alabama, Kanana, Khuma and Tigane, the hospice offers a multifaceted service to HIV/AIDS sufferers and their families. This ranges from medical treatment, including pain management and infection control, to support for orphans and vulnerable children and the supplying of food parcels and nutritional supplements.

Matlosana assists about 280 patients a month through its home-based care programme. On average, staff members make 1,000 visits a month to patients’ homes. A day care programme is available in all five townships and each facility attends to some 30 patients a day. Here patients who are not bed-ridden get together once a week for treatment by a nurse, to socialise, to do handiwork which is sold to raise money for their own needs and to assist with fund-raising for Matlosana, and to listen to uplifting and informative talks.

The children of hospice patients, some of whom are infected themselves, are looked after at a palliative day care centre. There is also a community house with accommodation for eight ‘in transit’ patients who have been discharged from hospital either because their condition is terminal or because, following treatment, they are well enough to go home.

Every year the hospice trains around 100 people from the community to care for those suffering from terminal illnesses. These community care workers assist Matlosana’s professional staff.

Other activities include helping families to access social grants and forming partnerships with organisations working to break the silence and eliminate the stigma around HIV/AIDS. Counselling is also available to help patients to face death and to support families during the bereavement period.

AngloGold Ashanti’s relationship with Hospice Matlosana goes back to 2001 when the first grant was given, followed by a further grant in 2002. The involvement deepened in 2004 when the then AngloGold Ashanti Fund voted R900,000 (R300,000 a year over a three-year period ending in March 2007) to provide salaries for a professional nurse, a social worker and a community care worker as well as towards meeting the costs of palliative drug supplies related to infection control and pain relief.

AngloGold Ashanti Group Social Investment Fund manager Sipho Mahlangu explained the background. “We were sympathetic to this appeal as we recognised the growing need for the hospice to improve and extend programmes. A single professional nurse enables five community workers to be supervised, allowing the hospice to attend to an additional 150 to 200 patients a month.

“At this stage we were also becoming increasingly aware of the need for care workers to have access to drugs for pain relief. What was happening was that patients were being given drugs while they were mobile and able to get to see a nurse, but were unable to obtain these once they became bed-bound and were being attended to by a community care giver,” he said.

And the Fund’s support of Matlosana did not come to an end in 2007. During the year the hospice was granted R176,000 for the purchase and renovation of a house in Kanana for a day care centre from which community outreach programmes are being run.

Sipho summed up the Fund’s view on Matlosana: “This is the kind of project that we are happy to support. The hospice, which has been running successfully for a number of years, is situated in one of our operating areas. It is rooted in the community and is providing an excellent all-round service to HIV/AIDS sufferers and their families.”