A South African Indian woman has set up a new community health centre here where doctors, psychologists and beauticians will provide counselling to people.

Najma Khota, a community worker and radio and television broadcaster, has helped establish the first Centre for Development and Transformation in the sprawling Indian township of Lenasia, south of here.

The centre, of which Khota is the executive director, is a branch of the University of Johannesburg.

"One of the main objectives of the centre is to assist psychology students from the university to do their community service here, while there will also be various courses run by doctors and specialists in their fields, all of which will be accredited by the university," Khota said at the official launch of the centre Sunday. 

"For example, we have a paediatrician who has just completed a sports medicine degree. He would like to develop children through sport, so we are looking at training sports masters.

"Then we have Gaguta Morton, who is American-born, but has lived all her life in Sweden where she is very well-known for her acupressure therapy.

"She can not only train someone like you and I but she is also looking at training psychologists to include the kind of therapy she teaches in terms of psychosomatic illnesses."

The centre also has Aadila Amod, a life coach who too has done neuro linguistic programming. There are also beauticians Anton van Niekerk and Aleit Pretorius who are from Nouvelle Beaute, based in Lenasia.

"If you look at a typical scenario, when we get someone coming in to the centre for counselling we work with the psychological problem. And then there's the grooming side of it, which makes a person feel good.

"Salmaan Dalvi will be offering a course in herbal medicine, so when you leave our centre you can be transformed both physically and mentally."

Khota said various community organisations and healthcare professionals in the greater Lenasia area and the huge neighbouring black township of Soweto were being approached for referring people to the new centre.

The opening of the centre also had a poignant moment when Khota released a book of sayings dedicated to the memory of her brother Naz, who was also a well-known Lenasia community worker and sportsman before his unexpected death four years ago.

The book contains not only poems written by Naz Khota himself but quotations culled from various sources over many years. It also has writings of Khota herself, which she often used while broadcasting on local radio stations The Voice and Channel Islam.