Clinic debate

HS Shapiro, Hout Bay

I can understand the various viewpoints about the location of the proposed Hout Bay clinic and I would like to suggest that if the Hout Bay Common site is tastefully designed and landscaped, these differences can be accommodated.

I have, for several months, been a patient at the Hangberg clinic to which I was referred from Victoria Hospital, after an accident.

A dedicated and highly professional staff, working under difficult conditions, changed wound dressings and monitored my blood (INR) while attending to many other patients. It would be ingenuous for me to suggest that I was one of the abject poor like so many of my fellow patients: I am now elderly and simply can no longer afford any form of private medical care. I don’t know how I would have coped without the cheerful and sincere attention of everyone at this wonderful facility – doctors, nursing staff, pharmacists, clerical and security workers.

There entire operation is smoothly efficient and devoid of socially disruptive issues.

If the staff at the clinic are convinced that the commonage site is the best for relocation and the necessary upgrading, I would urge everyone involved in this dispute to give special attention to their input. As I said, with careful, unemotive, thought and planning this facility could be made to work in the interest of most people.