Kids’ Hospital Fulfills Mandela Dream 3 Years after Death
Local Editor
Brightly-painted wards and colorful furnishings are matched by state-of-the-art equipment and pioneering operating theaters at a new children's hospital in Johannesburg honoring Nelson Mandela.
After he led the struggle to dismantle apartheid, one of Mandela's most cherished dreams was to build the first specialist pediatric hospital in southern Africa.
To mark the third anniversary of his death on December 5, and more than 10 years after he conceived the idea, the Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital admits its first patients on December 2.
His dream materialized after a successful battle for funds despite the global economic downturn and the difficulties of inspiring donors without Mandela's charm and iconic presence.
"It's a miracle, or just short of a miracle. The children's hospital was a dream -- nothing but a dream and an idea," Sibongile Mkhabela, CEO of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund, told AFP on a tour of one of the new wards.
Mandela, who was South Africa's first post-apartheid president from 1994 - 1999, officially started the project in July 2009 at the site of an old cricket ground.
Much of the fund-raising took place as Mandela became increasingly frail and unable to lobby for donations.
Construction finally began in 2014 as donations came in from philanthropists and businesses including the Bill Gates Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Islamic Relief Worldwide and South African businessman Eric Samson.
Some children even emptied their piggy banks, while ordinary South Africans donated through a popular text message appeal.
The hospital logo of animated faces was designed by children, as was the wallpaper in the wards and along the corridors.
The three-floor critical-care facility will provide cancer care, kidney and lung treatment, as well as heart, chest and brain surgery and a range of other urgent medical needs.
It will be staffed by 450 pediatric nurses who have been undergoing training over the past five years and 150 specialist doctors, including some from Canada's Hospital for Sick Children and John Hopkins Medicine International in the US.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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