“It is an inconvenience to waste another day waiting in the queues & I worried if it was really my medicine”

Delays at the clinic are only made worse by chaotic paper filing systems, where staff struggle to locate people’s medical files, or lose them altogether. Filing systems were observed to be in good condition in only 56% of sites monitored in Mpumalanga, mostly due to filing rooms being too small to maintain and/or filing systems being messy. The carelessness of lost patient files from bad filing systems in clinics can cause public healthcare users distress and anxiety. This is one of ten issues outlined in the latest edition of a Ritshidze State of Health report in Mpumalanga. Below we highlight the experiences of two public healthcare users whose files were lost at Khumbula Clinic.

For Thuli* (name changed to protect identity) arrived on her appointment date to the clinic for her regular ARV collection. But when she reached the front of the queue she was told that her patient file could not be located. Even though she says she’ had a long relationship with the clinic and was diagnosed with HIV at that clinic they didn’t help her with her refill and simply told her to return the next day. 

She says: “It is an inconvenience to go twice and to waste another day waiting in the queues. When I got there the following day they handed me a file but it had someone else’s name on the front cover. On the inside it looked like all my patient information, but I wasn’t sure. When I asked why the file had someone else’s name on it they just told me to take my medicines and go.” 

“It made me worry a lot and I worried if it was really my medicine or if they had made a mix up. It’s very frustrating because you can’t ask them questions, or they don’t answer you properly. I couldn’t get an explanation so I just left,” says Thuli. 

At her next appointment date she had another surprise regarding her patient file. On this appointment date she was presented with a new patient file. Even though she was told it had her complete records in it, again she couldn’t be sure and again there was no-one to give her assurances or explanations that it did not affect the management of her HIV. 

“It has been many years that I have used that clinic, and many years that I have been taking ARVs. They know me at the clinic but I still couldn’t ask for someone to just explain nicely to me,” she says. 

And here another public healthcare user explains their experience:

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About RITSHIDZE

“Ritshidze” — meaning “Saving Our Lives” in TshiVenda — has been developed by people living with HIV and activists to hold the South African government and aid agencies accountable to improve overall HIV and TB service delivery.

Partner organisations include the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the National Association of People Living with HIV (NAPWA), Positive Action Campaign, Positive Women’s Network (PWN) and the South African Network of Religious Leaders Living with and affected by HIV/AIDS (SANERELA+)—in alliance with Health Global Access Project (Health GAP), the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), and Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.

CLICK HERE to read more and see where we work.