Feeling Positive is a multidisciplinary health practice at Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre in Parktown, Johannesburg. 

 

It is the brainchild of Dr Gail Ashford, who first started a website in 2009. The aim of the website was to bring information that is locally relevant to people in South Africa and Africa. Dr Ashford's passion for working together with People Living With HIV drove the need to develop her own website. Most information online is North-centric and centred on the experiences of PLWH in North America and Europe. Indeed the HIV epidemics in the global north look very different to the HIV epidemic we see here in South Africa. 

 

South Africa has the largest treatment programme in the whole world, and about 1/3 of the world's HIV positive people live in South Africa.  Here in SA, HIV is an infection that is found predominantly in heterosexual people, not just in Men who have sex with Men. There is a huge burden of HIV in teenagers, and young women, and about 30% of pregnancies in SA are to women who are HIV positive. 

 

The entire North American continent sees about 2000 HIV positive pregnancies in a year. At Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto ( the largest hospital in the Southern Hemisphere) , where Dr Ashford consults at the Pregnancy HIV clinic - there are roughly 10000 pregnancies to HIV positive women per year. In one facility! compared to an entire continent. This highlights how different the epidemics are , and this is why , South Africans and Africans should be looking to local sources for information about HIV that is relevant to them. 

 

Dr Ashford specialised in 2008 as  Specialist Family Physician, a young specialty in South Africa, that is focused on enhanced, comprehensive care for the entire family.  Family Physicians are ideally suited to see chronic conditions that affect the whole family ( like HIV, TB, Diabetes, Obesity and Autoimmune conditions).  Dr Ashford has been in practice as a specialist since 2008, and sees children, adults, elderly and in particular pregnant women. As a strong woman's advocate, and a minority voice in the private sector of healthcare ( there are very few women HIV specialists, and even fewer who are expert in pregnancy and support breastfeeding)

 

She has been working with Taurayi Fred Kativu and Jenifa Halu for many years, and they are an essential component to the multidisciplinary team.  Our approach at Feeling Positive is to offer a form of "concierge" care - where we go the extra mile to offer administrativie support, explaining and helping you to understand medical aids, motivation letters, communicating all results to you and offering general tender loving care - because navigating health care and the systems can be very overwhelming. 

 

 

Carmin Wright and Zamo Mbele, are two other clinicians that work closely in the team. Carmin Wright is an occupational therapist and hand specialist, with a busy practice seeing in hospital patients at Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre for over 16 years. Zamo Mbele is a Clinical Psychologist and mental health expert who sees patients in person and virtually for therapy sessions. 

 

If you are looking for a private environment, with holistic care, compassion and excellence of care, then you've found your new health home here at Feeling Positive.