This is the story of the lived experience of a family medicine registrar, Dr Randall Ortel. He is the first doctor from the Manenberg community in Cape Town. From an outsider perspective, this community is known for its high incidence of crime and gang activity; however, from an insider perspective, the community faces challenges that are not apparent to the outsider (such as access to health care).

The COVID-19 pandemic uncovered the deficiencies of health systems globally, especially where health needs of communities are complicated by the existing burden of diseases and socio-economic disparities. The Manenberg community shares this reality and reached out to Dr Ortel as the COVID-19 crisis began to unfold. Dr Ortel facilitated care coordination of COVID-19 positive individuals via a grass roots level, community-orientated approach. This included helping positive patients to be quarantined safely, as the initiatives by the health services and employers were not able to meet the local needs. He met with community leaders to facilitate focused activities in conjunction with the local health services, and also helped create awareness via social media (including WhatsApp, Facebook and Youtube). Dr Elma de Vries, the family physician at the Heideveld community health clinic and senior lecturer within the Division of Family Medicine in the School of Public Health and Family Medicine in the Faculty of Health Sciences at UCT, played an instrumental role in supporting and mentoring Dr Ortel during the care coordination of these patients and their families.

Dr Ortel was able to employ his insider perspective and leadership skills to enable his community to respond more efficiently to this public health emergency, by combining his contextual understanding with the principles of family medicine. This resulted in his story being showcased by Murray La Vita in Die Burger on 15 May 2020 – ‘Ek bly hier in Manenberg’.

Family Medicine is the clinical discipline which bridges the health needs of individuals with those of their families and community. At UCT’s Faculty of Health Sciences, the Division of Family Medicine has facilitated community-based student training over the past two decades. Postgraduate students at Master’s level work in dedicated registrar posts within the district health system for a period of 4-years. During these 4-years, these students have to complete university coursework, workplace-based learning and assessment, as well as an applied research project, before being eligible for the national exit examination via the College of Family Physicians (within the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa). The qualification, the Fellowship of the College of Family Physicians – FCFP(SA), is required to register as a specialist in family medicine with the Health Professions Council of South Africa. There is a need to grow the critical mass of family physicians within the South African health system, in order to support high-quality, team-based primary care which is tailored to the needs of the local community. Family physicians are trained to fulfil six essential roles, including clinical leadership aimed at facilitating a patient-, family- and community-orientated primary care experience.

*This abstract has been submitted to the 2020 virtual TUFH conference: https://tufh2020.com/ - organised by The Network: Towards Unity For Health: https://thenetworktufh.org/. Social media: #TUFH2020, Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheNetworkTUFH.

For more information, please visit: http://www.publichealth.uct.ac.za/phfm_family-medicine, or contact: A/Prof Klaus von Pressentin, Head: Division of Family Medicine, School of Public Health and Family Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town: klaus.vonpressentin@uct.ac.za.