Praktiseer Home Based Care is based and operates in Praktiseer Township outside Burgersfort in Limpopo, South Africa. The organisation was founded in February 2003, by a group of women from the community, in response to the increasing number of ill and vulnerable community members that did not access proper health care and social services. The project coordinator, Tertjie Seloane, explains that there was a lack of knowledge in the community around the issue of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STD), how they are spread, the symptoms and what treatments are available. She has also found that many people suffering from Tuberculosis did not even know that they could be cured with the right treatment.

Praktiseer’s core business is to provide Home Based Care to people in the township suffering from HIV/TB and other diseases. The program includes helping and educating the patients on the issues of hygiene and nutrition, monitoring treatment, door to door visits in order to establish and maintain the relations with the community members and identifying new patients. Apart from the core business they have support groups for people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS and also assist the social workers by identifying and referring orphans and vulnerable children. Next to the new clinic they have managed to establish a small food garden in order to be able to support poor and ill people in the community with vegetables.

Praktiseer receive financial support from the Department of Health in order to carry out their service and to be able to pay the volunteer workers a stipend. At present the organisation has 19 volunteer, 11 of which receive the stipend, who serves 380 registered patients. However, the need of the community exceeds the capacity of the organisation and the women struggle to make ends meet. At present Praktiseer operates from an office that they borrow from the local clinic.

The organisation has been appointed a piece of land from the community, big enough to fit a proper office building and also a food garden, but up to now they lack funding to build on the site. In the future the women at Praktiseer hope to be able to extend the activities of the organisation to also include a drop in centre to accommodate the large number of orphans and vulnerable children in the community.

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