Awards 2008 : Category Finalists
Arts, Culture and Communications • Business Entrepreneurs • Education • Health • Science & Technology • Social Welfare • Sport
Health
Ms Ellen Malinga is a woman who in the past 25 years has never accepted no for an answer in her quest to help those vulnerable and in need, especially the disabled. Despite personal tragedy and loss she has worked relentlessly leaving an astonishing trail of self-help projects that have made a huge difference in the communities where she has been working with bedridden and incapacitated patients.
Trained as a community rehabilitation facilitator or a district nurse Ms Malinga has been in the full-time employment of the Muldersdrift Clinic in Gauteng since 2002 and before that she was working for various clinics in Bronkhorstspruit and Alexandra.
Through her work she has been in touch daily with the hardship of people and took a special interest in the plight of disabled people and used every spare moment to her avail to initiate self-help projects helping them and others in desperate situations.
At one stage she was walking the streets of Alexandra with some of her co-workers trying to locate disabled people to make them aware of the facilities and services available at clinics and include them in self-help projects. They found 391 patients in a week that they assisted to benefit in some sort of way from the help available.
The self-help projects which she introduced ranged from vegetables gardens and stalls to furniture making, weaving wicker baskets and mat making. All these activities were happening ad hoc which made Ms Malinga decide to group it all together under the name of Alexandra Disability Movement.
It enabled her to raise funds and assist the members much better while she also conducted community education under the banner. A very successful project was the “child-to-child- education” project which taught children to accept disabled children.
In 1998 personal tragedy intervened when two of Ms Malinga’s children drowned in the river in Alexandra. It was devastating for her and she returned to Bronkhorstspruit to be with her mother at home for two years.
When she found the strength to come back she first worked at the Randfontein Motlakeng Clinic and then moved to the Muldersdrift Clinic where she is still working today. After arriving here she soon started with her concept of self-help projects.
She established a sewing group and vegetable garden project at the clinic. Both went from strength to strength. She again formalised the initiative and founded a Non-Profit Organisation named “Thandanani Sizwe Sethu” which literally translates to “Love one another”.
The name came from Ms Malinga witnessing tribal differences between patients in the queues at the clinic which resulted in some in-fighting. She wanted to bring these diverse ethnic groups together through togetherness in work. They were all invited to join Thandanani Sizwe Sethu in setting up gardens or do sewing.
She also started a soup kitchen, serving food in the passage there to the people in the queues Away from the clinic she started a crèche to help working mothers with little children in a nearby squatter camp. With sponsorship she also helped build a rehabilitation clinic and her most current project is a hospice she has established in Braamfisherville, offering sheltered accommodation and full-time care to orphans and “at-risk” patients.
The hospice has nine 9 patients and there are a further 8 on the waiting list. Ms Malinga has also set up a soup kitchen, and visits twice a week and weekends to conduct therapy, do exercises with the patients, and organises visits from the church. There are 3 full-time caregivers.
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Prof Lorna Barbara Jacklin has dedicated her life and in particular her medical career to improving the lives of children with mental health problems caused by physical disabilities or abuse. She has acted as an Ombudsman for these children who do not fit into mainline education and struggle to fulfil their potential as they are misunderstood, misdiagnosed and mistreated.
Mental health problems rob these children of a fair chance in life if not treated as it eventually translates into developmental problems which in turn bring social problems as children grow up into adults who cannot function independently and are anti-social in their behaviour.
Prof Jacklin holds the position of the Principal Consultant Pediatrician with the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand and consults to the Pediatric Department of the Johannesburg Hospital.
Using her knowledge and capabilities in the mental health medical field, she has made a difference in the lives of thousands of children acting as medical consultant to the Neuro-developmental Clinic at the Johannesburg Hospital and various other clinics and initiatives in support of children with mental health problem.
With an unwavering dedication to help the neediest of children who would normally not have had services or interventions that can and do change their lives she has deliberately chosen to remain in public practice and extend her expertise to help the most marginalised children in our society.
Prof. Jacklin is determined to take her work in services for child abuse and mental disability beyond the clinic in the Johannesburg Hospital to a bigger community. She understands the plight of the poor who are overwhelmed by the needs of their child but also bound by their impoverished situation. These families find it incredibly difficult to find the money for transport to the Johannesburg Clinic and also it is hard to take their mentally disabled, and often difficult to manage children on public transport.
Understanding this she has embarked on a process to bring neuro-developmental outreach services to second level hospitals in the greater Johannesburg area taking her knowledge and services to the people. She is training, coaching and mentoring others so that services can be increased to the community.
Prof Jacklin has also recognised that the Autism Screening Clinic needs to be upgraded to a full service Autism Assessment Clinic whereby families can receive a comprehensive diagnosis of the child together with immediate and appropriate educational support and a plan of action for the family.
In her work in the Neuro-developmental Clinic she has been able to track the changing profile of autism as ever increasing numbers of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder are brought to her for assessment and medical support. This is extremely valuable work in the face of an international crisis of growing numbers of children with autism. She is ensuring that South African data is being collected and scrutinized as to whether our children are following the pattern presenting in the US and UK.
Prof Jacklin is one of the founder members and previous chairperson of Healing Jozi Kids, an organisation run as a university project to raise funds for the children’s wards and out-patient clinics at Chris Hani Baragwanath, Coronation and Johannesburg General Hospitals.
She started the Toy Library for patients and children with disabilities at Baragwanath Hospital in 1985. It is still in existence and has been replicated. She is a founder member of the Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children which was launched in 1986.
As there are no affordable pre-school and educational services for blind or autistic children in Johannesburg she also founded the Children’s Disability Centre in 1986. It is now a comprehensive service, which in partnership with the Johannesburg Hospital and Hospital School, allows for the assessment, early intervention and education of blind and autistic children. The service reaches out to the community by providing training and support to mainstream schools assisting in inclusive education where possible.
Children and adults with mental and physical disabilities are preserved to be scary as they don’t always fit into the world’s way of thinking and operating. Prof Jacklin is a champion for these children, providing them with a voice so that they can get the services that they need and the life that they deserve.
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Dr Janet Poole is one of the country’s leading specialists in the field of Paediatric Haematology and Oncology and treats hundreds of patients under the age of 16 years every month in the Johannesburg Hospital.
She has 22 years of experience in her field and has achieved an exceptional success rate in the treatment of these young patients with cancer or malignancy, or any blood disorders including inherited blood problems and bleeding disorders.
Her special interests are childhood leukaemia, Wilm’s Tumour (a cancer of the kidney), childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and inherited haemoglobin defects. She has always kept abreast of the latest research and passes her knowledge to the hundreds of medical students she lectures at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Medical School.
It was her choice to stay in the public sector to work with the poorest of the poor. This has enabled state-of-the-art medical treatment to reach many South African children diagnosed with cancer regardless of race, creed, social standing or financial status.
Dr Poole qualified in 1978 at the University of the Witwatersrand. Five years later she became a specialist paediatrician and commenced work in the Paediatric Haematology/ Oncology Unit at the Johannesburg Hospital in 1984.
She spent most of her career at the Johannesurg Hospital except for the eight years between 1989 and 1997 when she worked at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Paediatric Haematology/Oncology Unit. Dr Poole returned to the Johannesburg Hospital to become head of the unit as a Principal Specialist. She is also registered as a sub-specialist with Oncology.
From her training days she has always had a specialist interest in the management of the B.Thalassaemia patients, first at Coronation Hospital, then at the Johannesburg Hospital. In 2002, all Gauteng patients with B Thalassaemia major were transferred to the Johannesburg Hospital to be under the care of the Paediatric Haematology and Oncology Unit.
She has been involved with CHOC, the parent support group since starting to work in the Paediatric Haematology and Oncology Clinic at the Johannesburg Hospital.
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