New Cape Town trauma hospital is still a dream
● Almost eight years after one of Cape Town’s busiest hospitals closed, architects have still not been appointed for its replacement — which was scheduled to have opened five years ago.
The GF Jooste Hospital in Manenberg, which dealt with substance abuse and gangrelated trauma cases from the Cape Flats, was supposed to be reborn as a bigger and better district hospital at a cost of R785m.
The Western Cape health department upgraded the plans and announced a new R2.2bn Klipfontein Regional Hospital that would have 550 beds and dentistry, paediatric, obstetric and gynaecology services.
Civil society organisations said this week that the site of the demolished GF Jooste Hospital on Duinefontein Road had become a symbol of the provincial government’s unfulfilled promises.
The nearby Heideveld Emergency Centre, which is being used to provide emergency care for people previously treated at GF Jooste Hospital, could not cope with the increasing number of patients, they said.
“This has been an extremely long wait,” said Faldiela de Vries, chair of the mayoral urban regeneration programme. “The provincial government seems to be shifting the goalposts all the time.”
Fareed Jansen of the Manenberg Business Forum said: “Covid-19 is now used as a scapegoat, but the delays were already there long before the pandemic.”
The provincial government’s latest feedback was that the new hospital wouldn’t be built before 2025, he said. This was because a skills school had to be built at the old hospital site to free the Silverstream High School property for construction of the hospital.
“Because Manenberg is regarded as a red zone, even though we no longer have gang fights, ambulances don’t really come here, so having a medical emergency is very expensive,” Jansen said.
“People have to pay up to R250 to hire a taxi or private car to take them to the nearest emergency centre, which is only 5km away.”
Western Cape health department spokesperson Mark van der Heever would not comment on timelines, but said the Klipfontein Regional Hospital was “a mega-project which will greatly benefit the community and the larger Western Cape population”.
He said the contract for the appointment of architects was advertised last November and the deadline for tenders was January 25.
“The new hospital is intended to act as a referral hospital for surrounding communities. It will relieve pressure on Groote Schuur, the Red Cross Children’s Hospital and the Tygerberg and Somerset facilities, where patients are currently referred to for specialist services,” Van der Heever said.