Public health facilities for black people in South Africa at the time were very poor. There were high rates of tuberculosis and infant mortality and only one municipal clinic to serve the township of Duncan Village. Sr Aidan and her single nursing assistant, Sr Gratia Khumalo OP, offered much needed health care to the black residents of Duncan Village in a one-room clinic. In some years they attended to more than 20,000 patients. On the Friday before she died, she attended 170 patients in the clinic.
