Children’s hospital brings some relief
Madiba’s magic at work as specialised unit opens doors
THE 200-BED specialist Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital officially opened in Joburg on Friday, bringing the number of such facilities to only four on the continent. A referrals-only hospital, it is intended to service the entire Southern African Development Community (SADC) region.
A Who’s Who of dignitaries were in attendance, many to heap praise on Sibongile Mkhabela, the chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, who was tasked with the challenge of raising the R1 billion needed to set up the state-of-the-art facility.
A total R880m has been raised so far and “about 60 percent of this amount has been raised in South Africa”, the bean counters say.
Among its other distinguishing features, the hospital boasts 10 theatres that “can perform in excess of 5 000 life-saving operations a year”.
Gauteng Health MEC Qedani Mahlangu was in high spirits: “It is exciting and we’re extremely elated to see this facility open finally where it is today, to receive our children.”
It gives her bragging rights that the hospital is in Gauteng.
“When a child has a cancer, any type of cancer, lung or whatever complications, they will be referred here. There are lots of children born with difficult conditions. Those will be referred here.”
Within walking distance of the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, and the Chris Hani Baragwanath and Rahima Moosa also in close proximity, Mahlangu says: “The doctors who will come here are already in the system.”
She believes public hospitals continue to provide quality medical care. “We provide very specialised services in the hospitals,” the MEC says.
“The (medical) people doing the work in these hospitals do not want to go anywhere else,” she says, arguing that they are happy to work in the public sector.
It is refreshing to hear the MEC say they will use the new hospital as a benchmark of what they do in the provincial hospitals. She readily agrees that the public healthcare sector is fraught with difficulties.
Mahlangu says complaints should be addressed within 25 days “but if they can be done within a few hours, so be it”.
The new hospital will receive a new fleet of ambulances this week, the MEC says.
The matter of the 37 dead psychiatric patients is being dealt with by the Health Ombuds, she says. “But we continue to give our full co-operation.”
Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi added a lament in his speech that, apart from the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town founded 60 years ago, there were only two other children’s hospitals, one in Egypt and one in Kenya. “”Needless to say, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital is the newest and most advanced.”
Motsoaledi says: “We only have 10 paediatric cardiologists registered with the HPCSA in the whole country, both public and private.
“There are also only three paediatric clinical haematologists, five developmental paediatricians, 10 paediatric critical care specialists and seven paediatric oncologists in the country.”
The biggest point the new hospital helps him make is around the issue of access. Motsoaledi says: “Of course universal health cover- age means exactly that – access to good, quality health services regardless of your socio-economic status, but depending on your health needs.
“That is the meaning of the whole universal health coverage, which we call NHI, and we said when the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital opens, it should be open to every child. Not only those who can make it financially.”
Dr Tiny Mhinga, a trustee of the hospital, started on the project in the early stages when, together with a few others, they took instructions from the late Dr Nthato Motlana and Nelson Mandela.
The team of trustees went to France to learn from existing paediatric hospitals there, Mhinga says.
Songstress Judith Sephuma, who attended the opening, said: “As a mother, it is actually very exciting to see this facility ready to receive our children. I had a baby who passed on this year at four months.
“Now that we have this facility, a lot of children’s needs are going to be met, especially those born with disabilities of any kind.
“I think to have a hospital that specialises in kids is a very good development and the country is going in the right direction where children are concerned. We need to keep working at having more (hospitals), so we could have even half of what other countries have.”
Archbishop Thabo Makgoba says the coming of age of the project is commendable.
“It speaks deeply to me, especially from a scriptural perspective. John 10:10 says we should have abundant life, not some, all.
“It is also a constitutional value of redressing the hurt of the past. This hospital does exactly that, not in terms of income or opportunity but access.
“Such facilities help redress the inequalities of the past.
“I am originally from Limpopo. I also feel challenged to get a few people together to build a hospital in Limpopo that caters for such values.”