State-of-art Covid-19 hospital

A GROUP of 80 professionals has been toiling behind the scenes since March to put together blueprints for a dedicated, state-of-the-art, fully equipped and staffed, emergency and critical care Covid-19 testing and treatment hospital in Midrand.

To be named the Cecilia Makiwane Gallagher Critical Care Hospital, the facility will be built on the existing Gallagher Convention Centre infrastructure, subject to approval by both national and provincial governments.

The hospital will be built in four weeks, using a similar model to the Nightingale Hospital in the UK.

It will be named after Cecilia Makiwane (1880–1919), the first black registered professional nurse in South Africa and an activist.

Director of the Universal Healthcare Foundation Dr Johan Pretorius, the brains behind the project, said: “The hospital will be a free to access emergency hospital and will therefore be for all patients in need. It will accommodate anyone who is seriously ill as a result of Covid-19,” he said.

He said they worked with a team of 80 professionals comprising actuaries, engineers, doctors, architects and project specialists as volunteers.

The hospital will initially have 524 beds, but is designed to be up scaled to 1 178 beds.

“Our actuaries concur with the most recent projections of loss of life and shortage of ICU beds that lie ahead in the months to come,” he said.

Pretorius explained that it was critical the facility was operational by the time South Africa reached the peak of the pandemic which, based on current estimates, would be next month and August.