Community Care Givers Report
28 May 2026 | Shannen Harte
We have seen a surge of breast cancer in woman ranging from 20 - 50 years old. Over the past month we saw 8 cases of woman with breast cancer. We mentioned in a previous report that there is a lot of fear associated with getting treatment and many women leave the cancer until it is far too late, others are simply unaware of what is wrong with them and leave things until it is too late. Our community care givers have been providing emotional support to these women in need by accompanying them to hospital. Our care givers have also provided wound care to those patients whose cancer has gone too far, resulting in open wounds that need to be cleaned and dressed daily. February 4th was world Cancer Day where we hosted an educational talk at our clinic to try and spread awareness on early detection.
We have also been helping our patients manage their chronic conditions which involves long term pro-active support. We help them to manage their medication; ensure they make it to their clinic appointments by providing transport and help improve their quality of life through our home visits and holistic support.
Stroke Victim:
We had a stroke victim (Age 67) who was previously suffering from chronic high blood pressure that was left untreated. As a result of this, the patient suffered from a stroke and was rushed to our Primary Healthcare Clinic. We immediately sent the patient to hospital to be admitted. One of our care givers accompanied the patient to hospital where we then discovered the reason for her stroke. It was then decided that she needed a permanent caregiver to help her at home as her son was unable to due to his line of work, nor did he have any experience with caring for a victim of a stroke.
We assigned one of our caregivers to the case and arranged to have her visit the patient daily, provide support and help the patient with her rehabilitation. The son was very grateful to have our support as he was the only breadwinner for the family of 5 and worked long hours making minimum wage.
Stoma Care:
Our community care givers recently attended a training day on caring for patients with stoma bags. We have seen an increase in patients in need of home support with stoma bags and one particular patient was a 30-year-old female who was diagnosed with bowel cancer. She came to our Primary Health Clinic for support and to have her stoma bag changed. Adjusting to life with a stoma can also take a toll on your mental health so providing the patient with emotional support is very important. It was decided that she needed a caregiver to conduct visits to her home to help her with changing her stoma bag and providing her with any additional support she needed. Rather than having to go to a Government Clinic, we provided her with support directly at home, we were also able to provide her with stoma bags and the appropriate equipment needed to clean the area.
Over the past quarter our community care givers conducted 817 home visits.
