Johannesburg - The Bhisho Hospital in the Eastern Cape has been losing out on interns, community service doctors and senior medical personnel in recent times due to a lack of suitable accommodation on site. That was until Gift of the Givers stepped up to the plate by renovating a building at the facility to serve that purpose.
The charitable organisation set up a 120-bed dedicated Covid-19 facility at the hospital, providing beds, mattresses, pillows, linen, High Flow Nasal Oxygen machines, CPAP machines, scrubs, non-contact thermometers, pulse oximeters and general PPE's. However, the extra bed capacity required the deployment of additional staff.
The newly refurbished, R3 million upgrade was completed in one month with Gift of the Givers’ building team working through Christmas and the new year period, having arrived directly from the renovation carried out at Settlers Hospital in Makhanda.
The organisation expressed its gratitude to Sister Phumla Mnyanda, CEO of the hospital, and the Eastern Cape Department of Health for extending their full co-operation in permitting the upgrade of the facility. Medical personnel living in guest houses since the beginning of the year will take occupation this week.
An additional building is being considered for refurbishment to further increase staff capacity in the face of the devastating second Covid-19 wave and the demise of alarmingly large numbers of Health Care Workers nationally.
The official opening takes place at Bhisho Hospital on Monday, 18 January.
The Eastern Cape Department of Health has requested CPAP machines for many more hospitals in the province as it commissions an oxygen upgrade to several of its facilities. Both the supply of adequate oxygen and oxygen delivery machines are an absolute necessity for saving life in the second wave.
Gift of the Givers said it has already delivered 2000 CPAP machines, valued at R25 million, to six provinces around the country. Requests for the next thousand are pouring quickly, the charity said.
IOL