WATCH: Let’s not wait for the NHI: What these teams do together to make health care work

• The National Health Insurance Act awaits a Concourt ruling on two cases, leaving official health reform in limbo. But it doesn’t mean the system isn’t being reworked. People-centred health care is alive at centres as diverse as Nqileni Clinic on the Wild Coast and busy Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
• Their successes — notably Groote Schuur’s palliative care unit — can be attributed to partnerships with the community and teamwork among private institutions and government health facilities. 
• At Nqileni, community health-care workers run like a well-oiled machine. They go from home to home to do health checks, deliver chronic medication and support mothers and children. The programme has been running for 20 years, refining a model of care that works.
• In North West, paraplegics are becoming professional wheelchair basketball players, nurtured at Gelukspan District Hospital, which has a unique rehabilitation unit. Here people are trained to take care of their disabled family members and have embraced wheelchair basketball, despite substandard equipment and borrowed facilities.                  
• The lesson is that when communities lead, and partners support, health care becomes accessible and effective.

This story was produced by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism. Sign up for the newsletter.