A rural Eastern Cape health centre has had to close its doors at night because of crime and dry taps. But neither the local municipality, police or provincial health department say they're to blame.

It was only as she tried to run away to save herself that a former colleague of Sisipho Grootboom* discovered she was stuck.

Her patient's family, who'd rushed him in, intoxicated and with a knife wound, had locked the main entrance, fearing the attackers would try to get to him again.

But in doing so they'd cut her off from the only other person on site - and the person who could help her most: the security guard.

It was 2022, and Grootboom, a professional nurse, worked at the Ngcobo Community Health Centre in Masonwabe township, about 80km from Mthatha in the rural Eastern Cape.

Her nursing colleague hid in a side-room and somehow the security guard, who'd heard the commotion, managed to find his way into the building and battle the aggressive patient down.

In 20 years of being a nurse, Grootboom says, she's never experienced something like what happened to her colleague that night at her workplace.

She's become used to dealing with unequipped and understaffed health facilities - and how to find ways around it to still serve her patients.

But fearing for their lives has never been part of her worries, as it is in...