About

Witkoppen Health and Welfare Centre (WHWC), a private, nongovernmental organization and registered non-profit organisation, is a comprehensive primary healthcare clinic with social welfare services in the far northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

In 1946 WHWC was established by 2 local doctors as a small welfare organization. It has seen phenomenal growth and we now receive over 95 000 patient visits per year (around 400 patients every day) - some of Joburg’s poorest and most vulnerable people, many are immigrants, almost half are unemployed and the median monthly household income is R 1 700. They live primarily in Diepsloot, Kyasands and Lion Park informal settlements as well as Cosmo City, and experience great difficulty in accessing medical or social services.

Our objective is to ensure that the indigent communities surrounding our clinic have access to both high quality comprehensive medical care and social services. Our multidisciplinary team of health workers is dedicated to treating the patient and his/her family as a whole and in so doing ensuring the physical, mental and social wellbeing of individuals and families. We adopt a unique holistic, multi-disciplinary approach where we not only address both the medical and social needs of patients but also these needs in relation to their families.

WHWC has ongoing collaborations with the community development forums in our catchment areas where the needs of the communities are addressed. We go into the community with a mobile clinic for hard-to-reach areas with no medical facilities, providing hope and medical care to a sector of the population that has little or no option to go elsewhere.

We offer both adult and paediatric acute, curative and chronic disease management
services; HIV counselling, testing, care and treatment; a TB clinic, antenatal services, immunizations, family planning and Well Woman Clinic, an in-house pharmacy, nutritional advice from a registered dietician, Child and Family Mental Health, social, dental, laboratory and audiology services as well as social welfare services including care of mothers and vulnerable children, statutory work (e.g. foster care or adoption) and community projects.

SERVICES: Paediatric: Acute, curative and chronic cases, immunisation, well baby clinic and HIV services, including nutritional advice and social-service input when necessary.
Adults: Acute, curative and chronic services with a dedicated chronic diseases clinic.
Antenatal: Service provided by a multidisciplinary team that includes doctors, midwives, health educators, and counsellors.
Postnatal: Ongoing Prevention-of-Mother-to-Child Transmission counselling and care, immunisations, comprehensive medical care for mothers and infants and social welfare counselling.
Family Planning and Well-Woman Clinic: Contraception, breast screening, pap smears, colposcopy and Lletz treatment.
HCT: Every patient who comes to WHWC is has the choice to be tested for HIV or not.
HIV and AIDS: Care encompasses appropriate management at all the varying stages of HIV infection.
TB Clinic: Over a thousand patients are treated for TB each month due to an extensive screening programme to identify infectious cases and a community worker who traces TB patients who have defaulted on their treatment, as this poses a public health risk.
Social Welfare Services: Provided by 2 social workers and 5 auxiliary social workers who offer statutory work including foster care and adoption, assistance with application for IDs and grants, poverty alleviation, including feeding schemes and food parcels and orphaned and vulnerable children monitoring and care.
Mothers and Vulnerable Children: All pregnant women are sent for pre-test counselling and then given the option to refuse testing. If the patient is HIV-positive, she is given treatment to prevent the transmission of HIV to her baby, and she goes onto the prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) programme and started on antiretroviral treatment if required. The mother is followed up at our dedicated HIV clinic and the child is registered as a vulnerable child and supported in that project.
Child and Family Mental Health: Run by a doctor with a special interest in the field supported by a social worker and a counselling psychologist.
Dental Clinic: Managed by the Department of Community Dentistry.
Pharmacy: Appropriate drugs are available for all patients from our registered pharmacy.
Dietician: Available for dietary advice and relevant food supplementation.
Laboratory: All laboratory special investigation specimens are collected on site for analysis at NHLS (National Health Laboratory Services).
Audiology: Hearing screening tests are conducted to identify patients who require further intervention and possibly auditory aids.
Other investigations such as X-Rays, mammograms, and optometry: pro bono by private consultants.