Yesterday, two women told me the tale of Patensie's health service (Patensie is a fairly remote town in the Eastern Cape, population 5 000). People were dying, they said, for want of hospital services. An ambulance could race there from the nearest hospital in an hour -- but often it would visit other towns on the way, and turn off to farms, and so on. By the time it reached Patensie, let alone getting back to the hospital, people were dead. Apart from this, there were large parts of Patensie which were off-limits to ambulances. They showed me the Patensie clinic, burnt out hollow. People had torched it, they said, together with an ambulance. Now young men sat around the clinic's walls, smoking. There were two doctors in town, but those doctors were in private practice. A third doctor visited the town from time to time.
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