A CLINIC that offers services to the transgender community in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, is one of the centres affected by the United State’s decision to freeze funding to some of its international beneficiaries.
The Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute’s transgender health has enjoyed support from USAID but has, as of Tuesday, closed some of its programmes.
According to Wits University’s Prof Shabir Madhi, there has been “a stop order communication” issued regarding some of the USAID-funded programmes.
Madhi told Sowetan that this meant that all activities relating to the programme needed to cease effective immediately.
A transgender woman who visited the clinic on Tuesday afternoon said she received an SMS informing her to do so before 4pm. She said she had been collecting her script for hormones from the clinic.
“The closure is not going to affect me much because I can always go and collect the script at a private institute but it would mean I would now have to start paying for the script,” the woman said.
The SMS she received read in part: “Our donor, USAID, has served the Wits RHI key population programme a notice to pause programme implementation. As of close of business tomorrow [Tuesday] 28 January, we are unable to provide services until further notice.”
An employee says that about 1,800 patients and 24 staff members will be affected.
Health expert Dr Angelique Coetzee said SA needed to start lessening its dependency on foreign aid.
“People should be worried. There is impact on patient care and livelihoods. Doctors, nurses, [and] data capturers that are integrated into our clinics and hospitals will now be stranded and will not know where to get their salaries going forward,” she said.
Department of health spokesperson Foster Mohale said it was yet to receive formal correspondence on the matter. “We will communicate the implications of this decision once we receive a formal communication,” he said.
