The NPO Surgeons for Little Lives unveiled a state-of-the-art children’s burns unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital last week, with staff saying not even private practice can offer what is now available at the state hospital.
What began a decade ago as Professor Jerome Loveland’s vision to improve the lives of paediatric burn victims culminated in a unit that now rates among the best in the world.
Loveland, head of solid-organ transplantation at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre, started the non-profit organisation Surgeons for Little Lives knowing that burns are one of the leading causes of trauma among children.
“It began as an idea when we didn’t have a cent, but we pushed on without funding, and consulted with architects and plumbers, electricians and medical specialists and drew up the plans, designed the wards, did the costing and got everything done to the point where it was a spade-ready project,” Loveland told the Sunday Times.
He said a Johannesburg woman, Jenny Hoggarth, had played an important role in bringing the project to completion.
Hoggarth said the project was inspiring. “We are in awe of how it all came together. Visionaries, architects, fundraisers, builders, painters, plumbers, tilers, cleaners and security guards… They all showed up and did the work.
“Then came receptionists, nurses, doctors, researchers and students …to make this a place of healing and their labour of love every day.
“This unit is a lesson from people with good hearts on what can be done when you work hard rather than just dreaming,” Hoggarth said.
Some volunteers choose hands-on involvement – one artist offers patients art therapy, and some school children do community service at the unit.
Surgeons for Little Lives offers staff further training and burn care help and is focusing on an endowment plan to keep the unit operating in the long term.
The R26m facility, which replaces a previous unit, has 11 ICU beds, 24 general ward beds, an operating theatre shared with the adult burns unit, improved air flow to minimise acquired hospital infections, improved dressing rooms with stainless steel baths, space for rehabilitative services like physiotherapy and occupational therapy, and public bathroom facilities.
It also has special metal baths in which patients are scrubbed to slough off dead tissue before sterile dressings are applied.
The ward has vinyl murals on all the walls and bright images on ceilings above the beds, while staff have their own uniforms, including yellow golf shirts emblazoned with a royal blue logo declaring “I serve with a smile”.
Deputy manager of the ward, Thabo Tsienyane, said some of the burns patients stayed for months.
Nursing staff and doctors said their specialised work is desperately needed by the 600 or so patients they treat annually.
Derek Harrison, head of surgery at the hospital, said it was an exciting development.
“Not only can we offer improved care to patients in the local community and beyond, we have increased capacity for training, education and research.
“It’s where we can find new and better ways of doing the same old thing. Not even private practice can offer what we have here, as this unit is now among the best in the world,” he said.”
TimesLIVE PressReader article – More than kissing it better for baby burn victims (Open access)
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