NSMC trains health promoters in Rustenburg South Africa

The NSMC has now spent over two weeks working with Doctors Without Borders in South Africa to train their health promotion workers to interview women who have been the victim of gender based violence.  The aim of the project is to get more women who have been abused into dedicated clinic's set-up by MSF and the Department of Health in and around Rustenburg.  We are hoping these interviews with people in the target population will provide us with enough insight to develop a fully fledged social marketing programme.

One of the key insights that we have found so far is that women and men are often abused by people they know and often totally dependent on.  One of the most poignant quotes we heard was, "we are often abused by the people closest to us and supposedly love us".  The victims are often so frightened that they not only do not report the incident to the police but don't even to seek medical and emotional help.  many people suffer in silence with terrible emotional and physical scars.  We are hoping to find a way of overcoming this really difficult barrier in the next few months and get more people to trust the services offered by the clinics.  We will update progress soon.