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How Unjani Clinic Network Seeks To Empower Women In The Healthcare Sector

How Unjani Clinic Network Seeks To Empower Women In The Healthcare Sector. Unjani Clinic is a network of black women owned and operated primary healthcare clinics that provide accessible, affordable and quality healthcare to communities in low income areas. It complements the re-engineering of the healthcare system by creating community based healthcare structures at the point of need. It is an innovative model to address the inequality which exists between private and public healthcare services in the country. Whilst private and public hospitals and clinics exist there are too few to deal with the increasing healthcare burden and private healthcare is too expensive for the bulk of the population.

The innovation behind Unjani Clinic is based on shifting primary healthcare tasks to Professional Nurses and the ability to leverage a highly developed and extensive private sector distribution network to ensure more people have access to medicines. Unjani Clinic empowers women within their communities to own and lead the effort in transforming the healthcare system. At the front-end of the clinic delivery mechanism, the financial model has been tried and tested to ensure that sustainability pre-supposes commercial viability. All clinics in the network are given the business support and on-going coaching and mentoring to succeed and make a profit.

Each clinic guarantees 3 full-time sustainable jobs and has the potential for a further 2 jobs as patient numbers increase. The company has proven that Unjani Clinic offers a higher quality of care and more reliable service compared with other market offerings. The bundled pricing (consultation including medicines) is affordable and relevant to the low-income patients it serves.

Its vision for the network is to build a successful network of nurse owned and operated clinics; to set the benchmark for delivering quality and affordable healthcare services to the people of South Africa; to serve the network with the same passionate commitment that they provide to their patients and to provide business mentoring and coaching for sustainable enterprises.

The organisation also aims to empower black women, build a sustainable network of nurse owned and operated primary healthcare clinics nationally and create permanent jobs. Unjani Clinics NPC is reliant on funding from donors in order to expand the Network, in addition a monthly Network Fee is charged to each Clinic in the Network to cover some of the operational expenses of Unjani Clinic NPC.

By Thomas Chiothamisi

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