Quality health should not be a privilege for a few, but a guarantee for all.

Dr Asafika Mbangata is a family medicine registrar specialising at the University of Pretoria. She gets to rotate through many health departments in different hospitals and clinics. There she engages with community as part of her training, to ensure that she acquires firsthand knowledge and experience of the challenges of each department, and how they engage with people. She worked at Tshwane District Hospital, where she was rotating at the HIV clinic as one of the doctors, and is now in the paediatrics department in Mamelodi Hospital.

She got into medicine because she has always wanted to help the sick and suffering. She says that some patients still find it hard to trust female doctors, and that it becomes worse when you are black. She says she still gets people saying to her: “So nurse, is the doctor still to see me?” This used to offend her until she gathered that it is a problem faced by female doctors everywhere. “These barriers need to be vigorously stripped and done away with before they get inherited and cripple the next generation.”

The Community-Oriented Substance Use Programme (Cosup) is an initiative by the City of Tshwane in collaboration with the University of Pretoria that delves into the societal issue of substance use. Cosup is an outpatient programme, which utilises a biopsychosocial approach to substance use. Harm reduction, opioid substitution therapy, medical screening, psychotherapy and youth empowerment through social services intervention are some of the methods used to curb substance abuse.

After completing her studies, her goal is to go back to the Eastern Cape’s rural hospitals to help create a more fully-fledged and functional health department there. She is passionate about improving health accessibility, efficiency, equity and quality in rural communities. “Quality health should not be a privilege for a few, but a guarantee for all,” Mbangata insists.

“The one thing I struggled with as a woman in my journey was falling pregnant in medical school. Reality hit me hard. For the first time, I realised how easy it is for a woman to fall off the path of her dreams due to physiological constraints. Pregnancy is a beautiful but scary journey; especially when you are aware of all that could go wrong with either you, or the baby. These two factors can force you to sit your dreams out — for life, in some instances.”

This is why she takes small achievements seriously, Mbangata says. She considers it a big deal that she is able to set goals and achieve them at the set date, despite being a single mother who has other interests on the side, and who wants to maintain healthy relationships with her family and friends.

— Welcome Lishivha

Twitter: @AsafikaPluto