Report on an Evaluation of a Nutrition unit in Winterveld, South Africa. Unstructured interviews: Part 2

Abstract

We report on an evaluation of a Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit (NRU) at the request of Medecin du Monde (South Africa) on behalf of the St Peter's Heakth Centre (SPHC) in Winterveld. Winterfeld is a sprawling squatter camp north of Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, with huge socio-economic and environmental problems. The prevelance of protein-energy malnutrition in the community was recently measured but the results are still not available. Nevertheless malnutrition is a common clinical problem at the SPHC. For this reason a NRU was initiated in 1989. The evaluation had two components: an unstructured interview with health workers at SPHC and the NRU, and an analysis of all the records of patients admitted to the unit since it opened. Here we report on the findings of the unstructured interviews. Many of the problems at the NRU are related to managerial failures that could be corrected with very simple and basic steps as discussed.