The South African Post Office (Sapo) has confirmed that patients from public health-care facilities can now receive their chronic medication at its branches, except in the Western Cape, IOL reports.
Speaking to Newzroom Afrika, CEO Nomkhita Mona said Sapo saw itself as more than a postal service, and it 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 Sapo has the capacity to handle all this work with almost 14 000 employees 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 Sapo 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 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.”
Mona also said Sapo have been receiving positive feedback and people are happy, which 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.”
This service is aimed at those who live or work closer to a post office than a government clinic. A benefit of the service is longer service hours. Post offices are open until 5pm and Saturday mornings from 8am to 12.30pm.