Community health services are services dealing directly with people and their problems.

On this website, we are dealing with public sector facilities at community level. These facilities are the first port of call for the majority of health problems and, as such are mostly located in residential areas. Public sector means that we are referring to government run facilities. Private sector facilities and hospitals are not dealt with here.

Community Health Services are services provided by Clinics, Day Hospitals (nowadays known as Community Health Centres) and Midwife Obstetric Units (birthing units or MOUs) and include the following services: -

• Well baby clinics (baby feeding, development assessment, weight monitoring and immunisation).
• Curative care for children (acute and chronic illnesses such as coughs, colds, diarrhoea, skin rashes and asthma etc).
• Family planning (contraception methods and advice, including referrals for termination of pregnancy).
• Pap smear screening (30 - 59 years screening for cancer of the cervix).
• Diagnosis and treatment of TB.
• Treatment of sexually transmitted infections.
• Voluntary Counselling & Testing for HIV/AIDS and treatment of opportunistic infections.
• Curative care for adults (acute and chronic illnesses such as flu, bronchitis, diabetes, hypertension etc).
• Pregnancy tests, antenatal care, birthing and post-natal care.
• Dental care.

The facilities providing these services can be found by using the "Locate Health Services" function on the right hand side of this website, or alternatively contact your nearest clinic and enquire about available services.

Please note that NOT ALL services are provided at all facilities - check the list or phone the facility to see if your problem or concern can be dealt with. As a rough guide, few Clinics provide for adult curative acute and chronic care (those are usually provided at all Community Health Centres) while MOUs are often the only providers of antenatal, birth and post natal care. Different authorities run Clinics (Municipal services), Community Health Centres, Community Health Services Organisation (CHSO) and MOUs (Provinical Administration) but moves are afoot to bring all these services under one authority.