The Discovery Fund is funding and actively involved in key programmes to develop human capital and skills, and support primary healthcare service delivery. These programmes include:
Discovery Insure's Safe Travel to School programme is implemented by the Discovery Fund and our partner Childsafe. It uses Discovery Insure's IP to promote good driver behaviour among scholar transporters in the Western Cape and transports an average of 19 235 scholars per day. The programme has delivered good results and retained most of the drivers on the programme (958 in 2021 against 996 in 2020) despite challenges related to COVID-19 lockdown levels, which resulted in some of the drivers leaving the programme.
The programme will be expanded in a pilot being run in Gauteng, supported by R1 million in funding from Shell South Africa, scheduled to begin in the second half of 2021.
Hlokomela started as an innovative HIV and Aids educational and treatment programme. It now supports quality healthcare delivery for farmworker communities across almost 100 farms in Limpopo and Mpumalanga. After completing research into finding an appropriate funding model and partnership model research, Discovery supported the pilot project to test and extend the Hlokomela membership concept to enhance the sustainability of its services and readiness to participate in National Health Insurance. Discovery has also facilitated a relationship between Hlokomela and the Breast Health Foundation, where patients can be referred and transported to the Helen Josef Hospital's Breast Clinic in Johannesburg.
Hlokomela completed the piloted partial payment-for-services model to improve the sustainability of the organisation and to develop alternative streams of income in June 2020. The results were presented to trustees with the resulting key recommendation for a payment system as a hybrid model of privatised and partially funded clinic services. This will ensure clients from vulnerable populations still have free access to key services.
Other parts of the model roll-out include the exploration of a digital clinic management (GoodX) and filing system across all health care services to effectively manage patients' files, appointments and data to strengthen service delivery mechanisms, trial mobile clinic units, and the possibility of testing a TeleMedicine solution for clinics and mobile clinic units.
The Umthombo Youth Development Foundation provides scholarships and mentorship to youth from rural areas to pursue qualifications in the health sciences, helping address the human resource shortages at rural hospitals. The success of the model has been driven by ongoing mentoring for those young people to support their progress during their university studies. Discovery's funding supported 55 students in 2020 and Umthombo maintained their 93% pass rate, despite the challenges presented by COVID-19. Umthombo celebrated 57 new graduates, including Doctors, Pharmacists, Physiotherapists, Nurses, Occupational Therapists, an Audiologist, a Biomedical technologist, a Dentist, and an Optometrist.
Discovery contributes 25% of the total annual budget for Umthombo and the Fund has approved another three-year cycle of funding to the value of R8 250 000. There are currently 45 Discovery Fund supported Umthombo students out of a total of 177 enrolled at various institutions of higher learning.
To improve community health by supporting community outreach, health education, and the delivery of essential primary health services, the Discovery Fund supported:
- 224 Community outreach campaigns and workshops (annual target 213)
- Community-based care for communicable and non-communicable diseases for 19 354 people (annual target 14 507)
- Health screening of 24 438 children (target 16 700)
- Eight organisations in Maternal and Child health received funding totalling R 5 200 000
- Antenatal care provision for 15 771 women (annual target 8 209)
- Post-natal care provision for 15 282 children (annual target 11 624)
- Nutritional support for 2 585 children (annual target 3 131)
- Provision of prevention of mother-to-child transmission services to 13 511 women (annual target 9 780)
- Human Capital and skills development provided to 8 organisations at a cost of R6 110 000, resulting in:
- In-service training for 519 healthcare workers (annual target 700)
- Home-based care training for 18 individuals (annual target 20).
Discovery Fund programmes are supported on a pro bono engagement basis.