The women bringing healing and hope to Vrygrond

Tannie Anna Frans sits patiently as healthcare workers move around her, testing her breathing and taking her blood pressure with the confidence that comes from years of service. At 75, she has survived tuberculosis, arthritis and the dankness that seeps through the walls of her modest home in Vrygrond, Cape Town.

“You are looking so much better since we last visited you,” says caregiver Lydia Hlongwane.

Sister Nonthemba Ndlevu nods. “Although we now have a clinic that can provide the community with the services you deserve, we will continue making home visits to you and all our other frail clients.”

That promise – that no patient will be abandoned – lies at the heart of International Nurses Day, commemorated annually on 12 May.

Globally, International Nurses Day honours the emotional labour, endurance, compassion and humanity nurses provide daily to hospitals, clinics, homes and underserved communities. Nurses are often far more than healthcare workers. They are counsellors, caregivers, first responders and advocates. They are the difference between despair and hope.

This year, International Nurses Day carries particular significance for the community of Vrygrond. For the first time, the community will have their own healthcare facility: the Community Care Clinic – a dedicated healthcare space built not only to treat illness and injury, but to bring healthcare directly to the people who need it most.

Established in 1942 and home to about 40,000 residents, overlapping with Capricorn and located near Muizenberg, Vrygrond is widely considered the oldest informal settlements in the province. There is a painful irony to the name itself. Translated as “Free Ground”, its residents have benefited little from liberation. Overwhelmingly, it remains a place where poverty, unemployment and danger shape daily life, where residents regularly navigate gang violence, and where access to even the most basic healthcare services has long remained painfully inadequate. But what Vrygrond lacks in resources, it compensates for in resilience.

The Community Care Clinic is the culmination of a collaboration between nurses, community healthcare workers and international stakeholders – a partnership rooted in a principle too often absent in practice: that quality healthcare is a human right.

Framed by flourishing vegetable gardens, the prefabricated clinic stands as an oasis among potholed roads traversing patchworks of houses, shacks, “hokkies” and spaza shops . On what was once a bare patch of earth surrounded by makeshift containers now stands a holistic healthcare hub. Although it has been operational since March, the foundations were first laid on 1 April, with the official launch celebrated on 22 April. The clinic coexists with the Where Rainbows Meet Training and Development Foundation, an NPO providing early childhood development programmes, feeding schemes and holistic life skills courses.

The clinic was first conceptualised by Michelle van Tongerloo, founder of Giving Light, a Dutch NGO, together with board member Melina ten Haven. Giving Light has played a pivotal role in funding the clinic, with completion of the project overseen by Giving Light’s treasurer and project manager, nursing practitioner Ellen van Meerten.

Reflecting on the journey, Van Meerten described the clinic as “the product of community resilience, collective perseverance and compassion”.

“At the heart of everything we do is creating sustainable change,” she explained. “It is about empowering communities, meeting people where they are and building new realities together.”

They partnered with Mymoena Scholtz, director of Where Rainbows Meet and a board member of the nonprofit clinic. Scholtz describes the initiative as a vital investment in the health and dignity of the community.

“The clinic will have a significant impact on every aspect of community life, from early childhood to adulthood,” Scholtz said. “We hope that everyone in Vrygrond and the surrounding areas will make use of this opportunity to maintain all aspects of their health, both physically and mentally.”

It will be a challenging task. South Africa faces a critical nursing shortage, driven by an ageing workforce, high rates of emigration, budgetary constraints in the public sector and training bottlenecks, resulting in disproportionate nurse-to-patient ratios, burnout and compromised care. This is compounded by a crippled public healthcare system, particularly in remote rural areas where NGOs have often stepped in where the government has failed to step up. But in the Western Cape – a province that prides itself on efficient governance and service delivery – it feels especially egregious that a community bordered by comparatively affluent False Bay suburbs should continue to endure such indignity. For example, it is estimated that 1.9 million residents of these underserved communities along the Cape Flats, including Vrygrond, face a high risk of tuberculosis and related pulmonary afflictions.

Vrygrond residents have historically depended on facilities such as False Bay Hospital and Victoria Hospital in predominantly affluent suburbs. Within an already strained healthcare system, ambulances are often delayed, transport unreliable, and even the provision of basic medication remains beyond the reach of many residents. Since the reduction in US aid funding, access to lifesaving antiretroviral treatment has also diminished significantly in a community where TB and HIV/Aids remain harsh and ongoing realities.

Vrygrond’s Community Care Clinic aims to fill that gap by offering a broad range of services, including general medical care and first aid, treatment for acute illnesses, chronic disease management, women’s reproductive health, HIV, TB and STI testing, as well as childhood immunisations.

The clinic has also become part of a broader public healthcare partnership across the False Bay area. While the clinic does not yet operate a full vaccination programme, neighbouring Lavender Hill, Seawinds, Overcome Heights and Muizenberg clinics have stepped in to help, sharing resources and support.

“Our objective is to work with and strengthen what already exists in the area,” says Samantha Searle, the clinic’s senior healthcare worker.

Fixed vaccination days will now take place twice monthly at the clinic, allowing children to receive essential immunisations. Together with its Muizenberg and Seawinds counterparts, the Vrygrond Community Care Clinic will also jointly host activities commemorating World Tuberculosis Day, HIV awareness campaigns and World Health Day programmes.

Provincial MEC for health and wellness Mireille Wenger praised the community initiative during the official launch, emphasising the importance of partnerships in addressing healthcare inequality.

“No organisation can serve a community on its own; we need partners,” she said. “The opening of this clinic is a strong example of successful collaboration.”

Yet, amid speeches, ceremonies and official acknowledgements, it is nurses and healthcare workers who remain the brave hearts of this project.

They are the ones conducting home visits long after shifts have ended; comforting frightened mothers, monitoring chronic illnesses, dressing wounds, organising vaccinations, tracing TB contacts and carrying communities through crises with limited resources and little recognition.

For resident Nazeema Arris, who volunteers at Where Rainbows Meet, the clinic is a sanctuary from the daily risks of navigating her way safely past clusters of gangs, waiting to rob or harm women and children. “Although we feel abandoned by the authorities, we now have healing and hope,” she says tearfully.

In a country where access to healthcare remains profoundly unequal, the Vrygrond clinic stands as proof that when nurses, communities and partners work together, sustainable healthcare becomes possible, even in places where the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow nation remains out of reach. DM