Efforts to re-establish the iconic KwaZulu-Natal Children’s Hospital in Durban have received a major boost with the completion of another phase of renovations, celebrated last week with the official opening of two of the four newly renovated facilities: the Victor Daitz Psychology Centre and the Centre for Adolescent Health.
That takes the total of completed renovations to 65% of the hospital precinct, reports TimesLIVE.
“It was a four-part renovation. We now have a brand new therapy space that will be used by the physiotherapy team, a centre for adolescent health which was funded by the Elton John Aids Foundation; we have a new psychology centre that was funded by the Victor Daitz Foundation, and the USAID-funded mothers’ lodge, an accommodation facility for children, their caregivers and their mothers,” said Taryn Millar, CEO of the KZN Children Trust.
KZN Children’s Hospital (formerly known as the Addington Children’s Hospital) was the first hospital for children on the African continent, opening in the 1920s. In 1984, it was shut down and remained closed for 28 years, its buildings falling into total disrepair.
In 2011, an NPO, KwaZulu-Natal Children Trust, began a project to reopen and renovate the hospital with the support of the Department of Health in a private-public partnership, and various donors.
Anuschka Coovadia, chair of the Trust, said: “We want to make sure that any child in KZN has access to optimal healthcare services, no matter into which socioe-conomic situation they may have been born.”
“The next phase is the completion of the building that will function as our centre for community health, and we have secured funding from the South African Muslim Charitable Trust,” Millar said.
The hospital was now an outpatient facility, though it had already made great strides to service as many people as possible.
“Our neuro-developmental assessment centre has been operational since July 2013, and has seen more than 35 000 young patients since then, while since the adolescent health centre opened last year, more than 2 000 adolescents from the inner city precinct have been attended to.”
The project still needs funding for an extension to add a psychiatric outpatient facility, a 10-bed child in-patient psychiatric ward, and a 15-bed female in-patient psychiatric ward.
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