According to the department, more than 43 000 devices such as hearing aids and wheelchairs were issued to the disabled.
Additionally, free wheelchair repair services were offered to wheelchair users through the province’s repair workshops.
Public health facilities also offered people with physical and mental disabilities, the elderly, children under the age of six, pregnant women and those who are on disability grants free health care.
Posts in all medical orthotics and prosthetics centres have been filled and podiatry staff had increased from five to 13 since 2007.
Department of Health spokesperson Simon Zwane said these investments were budgeted for and formed part of an ongoing government programme.
“The government’s empowerment programme for the vulnerable was not only aimed at women and children, but the disabled,” said Zwane.
He said the initiatives were “absolutely necessary” because they served not only to assist the disabled, but to empower them.
“For example, they [the disabled] themselves run the wheelchair workshops and repair wheelchairs for other disabled people,” he explained.
A total of 545 people with disabilities were recruited into the department by March 2012 – up from 405 in 2011 – and the department intends to attract more people with disabilities into the organisation.
In a bid to address the needs of the elderly, the department has developed community based care through which community health workers ensure that senior citizens are being visited at their old age homes, and are provided with screening and treatment for chronic conditions.
Other services offered include cataract surgeries to eliminate preventable blindness, providing dentures, home delivery of medication and oxygen therapy at home.
Elderly people can now access 280 functional support groups for the four major chronic conditions – hypertension, diabetes, asthma and epilepsy.
There are 68 support groups which promote healthy lifestyles for older people at community level throughout the province.
