From the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, it became increasingly evident that the public healthcare sector was ill-equipped to cope with the surge of patients at its facilities.
Stemming from our Covid-19 intervention, Gift of the Givers embarked on a mission to create a long-term solution by refurbishing and renovating key hospitals in focal areas.
Mitchell’s Plain District Hospital offers citizens an emergency unit, surgery, orthopaedic, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, psychiatry, radiology and anaesthetics. It serves the Mitchell’s Plain, Philippi, Mandalay, Browns Farm, Cross Roads, Lentegeur, and Rocklands areas, whose communities largely form part of the informal economy and are the worst hit by lockdown precautions, thus further impacting an already poverty-stricken people. Our intervention included converting a wing at the Mitchell’s Plain District Hospital into a dedicated 60-bed COVID-19 oxygen facility, at a cost of R10 million. We also provided equipment, protective materials and High Flow Nasal Oxygen machines for use in the facility. The month-long renovation has provided an immediate solution – and a permanent facility – for the hospital to utilise as may be deemed fit, post-pandemic.
Gift of the Givers set-up a 120-bed COVID-19 facility at Bhisho Hospital in the face of rapidly rising rates of infection in the Eastern Cape. The hospital, which was receiving COVID-19 patients from Fort Hare and other regional facilities, was transformed into one of the Eastern Cape’s dedicated facilities for COVID-19 cases and urgently required beds, screens, PPE and window tinting. Gift of the Givers was pleased to be in the position to assist with establishing the necessary COVID-19 facility here, delivering 120 beds, mattresses and pillows.
