Cape Town - Around 50 Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH) staff with friends and family will take part in the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon this weekend to raise funds for the hospital’s Surgical Recovery Project.
At the end of 2021, there were more than 6 000 patients awaiting essential surgery at the hospital.
Groote Schuur Hospital Trust (GSHT) executive director Kristy Evans said: “The Covid-19 pandemic brought an unparalleled crisis to the healthcare system globally.
“Surging waves of critically ill patients necessitated dramatic restructuring of health care facilities and massive internal redistribution of health care resources.
“Tertiary academic elective surgical care, already a crucial and scarce resource in the public sector, had ground to a halt.”
The Surgical Recovery Project was established as a direct response to addressing the backlog. The project had set out to perform 1 500 catch-up elective surgeries over the first year of the project, with the plan of continuing the following two years to ensure the backlog was complete.
To date, the GSHT has raised R12.5 million, with R2.5 million still required to ensure its target of R15 million for the first year of the project is reached.
Each runner has been requested to raise R10 000, the cost of one surgery within the project.
Surgeries performed are those on the hospital waiting list, such as cataract surgeries, hip and knee replacements, cancer diagnostic surgeries etc.
“Having thousands of community members not able to access their operations, means that many family members, friends, relatives, colleagues are not able to function optimally in their lives.
“Every donation gets us one step closer to ensuring 1 500 operations can be finished in Year One and get us well on our way to ensuring all surgeries are caught up at GSH,” Evans said.