The South African Post Office has confirmed that patients from public healthcare facilities can now receive their chronic medication at its branches.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika SA Post Office CEO Nomkhita Mona said they saw themselves as more than a postal service and they wanted to play a major role in the community.
“We are also seeing ourselves playing a partnership role with the South African government, where the government is not able to reach communities and we as the South African Post Office are very happy to play that role,“ Mona said.
Mona highlighted that the Post Office has the capacity to handle all this work and they have almost 14 000 people working for it.
“In terms of capacity we have enough people that we can reskill, retrain and redeploy in these areas,” she said.
Mona also revealed that they started this project on a smaller scale in 2021.
“Last year the Department of Health wanted to see how we would handle this work. We have signed up a five-year contract with them and we started it in April, meaning we have been rolling out the service as far as we can,” she said.
She further added: “In terms of training, it depends on what skills we will require because postal sector officers, tellers and staff members have been continuing doing what they have previously been doing. The Post Office is not distributing the medication but handing it to someone to collect.”
She also said they have been receiving positive feedback and people are happy and that is why the Department of Health has entered into a long-term contract with them.
“The collection service is available at 342 post offices in all provinces except the Western Cape. These post offices were selected because they comply with the requirements of the Department of Health. Medication that requires specialised storage, such as cold storage, cannot be collected from a post office,”
Mona also said this service is aimed at patients who live or work closer to a post office than a government clinic. The main benefit of the service is longer service hours. Post offices are open until 5pm and Saturday mornings from 8am to 12.30pm.
HOW TO USE SERVICE
Giving clarity on how patients will receive their medication she said: ‘’Patients of government clinics who would like to collect their medication from their local post office, should arrange it with their clinic.
“The Department of Health sends the patient an SMS when the medication is ready for collection and patients have 14 days to collect it before the medication is returned to the Department of Health.’’