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The power of media: How this drug rehab centre got back its subsidy

  • Four days after our TV show, Health Beat, was broadcast on eNCA — the Freedom Recovery Centre, which helps drug users sober up, got confirmation from the Gauteng government that they would receive the subsidy they had been waiting for for months.
  • Without the Gauteng social development department subsidy, they would have had to close their doors and residents would have had nowhere to go.
  • The Centre was also informed that a pending investigation into their operations had been dropped with immediate effect.
  • Follow the Centre’s journey with our Heath Beat team, who visited them in the east of Gauteng in June, before they got their funding back.

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Cebelihle Bhengu was a TV health reporter/producer for Health Beat from May to July 2024.

Yolanda Mdzeke is a multimedia reporter at Bhekisisa.

Astra Rincón Montañez is a student at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at City University of New York. She interned with the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism from June to July 2024.

Jessica Pitchford is Bhekisisa's TV and multimedia editor. She's been a journalist since the early nineties and has reported on some pivotal events in South Africa’s political history, such as the country’s transition to democracy and the work of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

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