The Herald E-Edition

Orthotist and prosthetist sets up shop in Kwazakhele

Fatima Mathe decided to take practice to township so patients won’t have to travel long distances

Simtembile Mgidi mgidis@theherald.co.za

Moved by seeing many of her elderly patients spending their grant money on transport to access medical services in the suburbs, a Gqeberha healthcare specialist has opted to take her practice to the people.

Medical orthotist and prosthetist Fatima Mathe, 30, launched her practice — Lubanzi Ortho Medical Orthotics and Prosthetics — in Kwazakhele’s Masakhisizwe Resource Centre on Thursday last week.

According to the Johns Hopkins Medicine website, an orthotist makes and fits braces and splints for people who need added support for body parts that have been weakened by injury, disease or disorders of the nerves, muscles or bones.

After graduating from Tshwane University of Technology in 2015, Mathe, who was born in Pretoria, completed her internship at Port Elizabeth Provincial Hospital.

Since then, she had stints across the province including at Frere Hospital in East London and at a private practice in Mthatha before returning to Gqeberha, which she now considers her home, earlier this year.

“My main goal is to get patients mobile. I make prosthetics from scratch after assessing a patient,” Mathe said.

“I also do custom-made wheelchairs — we have a lot of cerebral palsy patients who need a buggy wheelchair, which you cannot buy from the shelf.

“Then as a medical orthotist I will prescribe a brace, which will assist bones towards healing optimally for mobility, as well as paediatric braces to help prevent further deformity, for instance for patients with scoliosis,” she said.

Scoliosis is a sideways curvature of the spine that is often diagnosed in adolescents.

Mathe said her inability to stand by and not help people in need guided her towards the medical field.

Ultimately, she said, being a medical orthotist and prosthetist was a profession that chose her.

Mathe said she discovered most of her patients spent most of their grant money on transport and decided to step in.

“I do believe the public sector is letting people down because they have these services, but, because of the long waiting lists [and] a lack of material, it forces our patients to come to private practices to access these type of treatments.

“By the time they are mobile, they have secondary conditions like hypertension or diabetics from sitting and not being active, so we offer an alternative [to] the public sector.

“Which is why, for instance, for a wheelchair we can offer a three-month payment process.

“I do home visits for my patients who cannot make it to the practice [because] at the end of the day we want to improve the quality of the lives of patients in the community.”

Mathe said there was also a lack of information on the importance of the health services provided to communities

“[Information] which can help us [medical professionals] move from doing damage control and rather work with the patient to better their health,” she said.

As a means of raising awareness, Mathe has offered up her time to provide educational talks on Nkqubela FM and plans to hold further outreach initiatives to help educate the community.

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2023-06-07T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-07T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://herald.pressreader.com/article/281569475123267

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