Mbekweni is a township in the Western Cape area of South Africa about 60km North of Cape Town near the City of Paarl. It has a history which can be traced back to the apartheid period and now has a growing population of 24,000, with the gradual urbanisation and trend of rural communities moving to population centres for both employment and services, against a backdrop of decreasing life expectancy.
The general health of the residents is of concern. TB increased in the area by 17% from 2001 to 2002, 15% of the residents live with HIV/AIDS and there is an incident rate of four times that in the USA for epilepsy. Poverty is also resulting in a number of other health related challenges – high teenage pregnancy rates, abused and abandoned children, and growing incidence of alcohol and drug addiction. There was a 54% increase in HIV/AIDS amongst pregnant women from year 2000 to 2001. Only 7.6% of epilepsy patients had received anti-epileptic drugs for more than 3 months of their lives.
