TATA’S DREAM ABOUT TO COME TRUE
WHEN ground broke at the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital to signal the beginning of construction, project manager Joe Seoloane and chief executive officer Sibongile Mkhabela kneeled down and wept.
“The ground was shaking and they were removing grass, we kneeled down and wept because we could not believe that it was finally happening,” Seoloane said.
“We cried because we never thought [it was going to happen]; we went from when people were saying it will never happen, we are dreaming, and that some of us did not even have experience of doing the job [and that] we just wanted to use the Mandela name.
“Here it is,” Seoloane said last week while taking the Sowetan team on a tour of the hospital.
The hospital was the late statesman’s dream, but he didn’t live long enough to see it come true.
Construction began last year although preparations for it started seven years ago. The hospital will admit its first patient in December.
“We want to have the grand opening around the anniversary of Madiba’s death,” Seoloane said.
Mandela died on December 5 2013. It took donations from all over the world to see the construction of the hospital that is situated near the Wits Medical School on the land donated by Wits University.
At completion, the hospital will have 250 beds. It cost R800-million to build even though the target was R1-billion.
“I’m glad to say that this hospital has been finished on time and on budget,” Seoloane said.
Already, there are plans to add extra 100 beds in the next five years.
Seoloane said they were estimating the expansion to cost around half a billion rands. In an interview with Sowetan last year, Mkhabela said the country was lagging behind in skills and expertise in children’s healthcare.
She said one of the main objectives of the hospital was to improve children’s healthcare. There are only four specialised children’s hospitals in Africa.
Two are in Egypt, one in Kenya and another one is the Red Cross Children’s Hos- pital in Cape Town.
Seoloane said some children “die before they see the theatre bed” in SA because there is not enough space and specialised doctors at ordinary hospitals to treat some of the rare sicknesses that children suffer from.
“Other major hospitals around here have bigger beds but they’ve got less ICU beds, so they cannot do many operations. This hospital is going to facilitate the backlog on the procedures that need to be done.
“In the whole of Johannesburg precinct, there are about 300 children with congenital heart disease, which means the child’s heart has a hole and that hole needs to be closed and you need to do a procedure. But right now there is a backlog and those children are not in any list as we speak because there is no capacity. Some children will actually die before they see the theatre bed,” Seoloane said.
The hospital is already armed with the latest technology when it comes to operating and X-ray machines. The total cost of the equipment in the hospital was R260million.
It has eight major theatre rooms, two minor theatre rooms and 48 ICU beds. The hospital is going to provide cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery, haematology, oncology, nephrology, pulmonology, craniofacial surgery, neurosciences and general paediatric surgery services.
It is going to employ 150 specialised doctors and 451 paediatric nursing professionals. It’s also going to be a training ground for paediatrician specialists.