Smart lockers such as Peleboxes have been rolled out across the country — but not in the Eastern Cape, which leaves people living in rural areas losing out
Asanda Kekana* places a parcel of medicine in her patterned tote bag on an open seat — a rare luxury in the crowded waiting area at Ngcobo Community Health Centre (CHC), a clinic in the rural town of Ngcobo in the Chris Hani district in the Eastern Cape, 80km away from Mthatha.
More than 70% of the population in Ngcobo live below the poverty line, putting a strain on public healthcare. In one month alone, at least 3,000 people visit the CHC.
“I’ve been here since nine o’clock this morning. I can’t afford the taxi fare from my village to Ngcobo, so I must wake up early to walk to the clinic,” the 45-year-old mother of three says, then checks the time on her cellphone. It’s 3pm.
“Whether the queues are long or short, I have to [come to get medication because I have to] take these ARVs [antiretrovirals] to treat my HIV infection for the rest of my life. There’s no point in complaining,” she shrugs.
Kekana slips her bag over her shoulder, preparing for the long journey home.
More than 700km away, at about lunchtime on an autumn Monday morning, Neo Hutiri, 33, is helping a patient standing outside the Germiston Municipal Clinic in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg.
Hutiri, an engineer, is showing a woman how to punch in numbers on a touchscreen surrounded by 144 small turquoise boxes set in a scaffold made out of metal bars painted in bright orange enamel.
Suddenly, a box pops open. Inside it is a brown cardboard package about the size of a brick with a barcode sticker stuck on one side. The woman laughs, surprised and happy at the same time. She takes out the parcel — a three-month supply of blood pressure pills — from the cubbyhole, waves goodbye and hurries off to work. All this took less than three minutes.
“It’s the convenience factor that really matters here — people are in and out,” Hutiri beams. “This is quality healthcare. This is access.”
Staying on meds
The compartment the woman collected her package from is one in a set of smart lockers, called Pelebox, which is made by Hutiri’s software development company Technovera. The lockers allow patients registered on the health department’s distribution system for chronic medicine, called Dablapmeds, to collect their pills without having to see a health worker each time.
Patients simply type in their cellphone number and a one-time password sent via SMS on the system’s built-in touchscreen to unlock a cubbyhole in which their packet of prescription medication has been placed earlier.
With this automated system, patients avoid having to wait in long queues to get their repeat medicine, like what Kekana had to endure at her clinic in Ncgobo.
The rows of boxes have been popping up at public clinics across the country as part of the government’s chronic medication distribution programme, which was introduced in 2014 as a way to make collecting medicine for long-term conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure or asthma easier and faster.
