A year after first breaking ground on the 238-bed, eight-theatre Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital (NMCH), in Parktown, Johannesburg, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital Trust (NMCHT) continues to advance the legacy project with a view to admitting its first young patient in the first half of next year.

Located on land gifted by the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Education Campus and lying adjacent to Wits Medical School and Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, the paediatric facility will, once completed, become the fifth facility of its kind on the continent and only the second in South Africa, alongside the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, in Cape Town.

In line with government’s Modernisation of Tertiary Services plan, the hospital will house several speciality centres, including a haematology and oncology unit, a cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery, a neurosciences unit, a renal unit, a pulmonology unit, a craniofacial unit and a general paediatric surgery unit.

The NMCH will also appoint specialists to treat communicable diseases, such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.

Government, through the Department of Health, has committed to supporting the operational costs of the hospital that are related to the care of public patients, while private patients will be funded by medical aid funds and patients from the Southern African Development Community through the provisions of bilateral agreements.

NMCHT CEO Bongi Mkhabela told journalists that an expansion of healthcare facilities for children in Africa would engender the “living legacy” of former Statesman Nelson Mandela, enabling each child that passed though its doors to experience the spirit of the struggle icon.

“[Through this project], we are creating the kind of world we want our kids to inherit . . . and 20 years from today, when we look at what we’ve done, we [will see that we have] built a knowledge base for our children and a facility in which they are cared for.

Africa needs to begin to define and redefine itself [in terms of the way that it treats its children], and this is part of the redefinition of Africa that we want to create. This hospital will be the statue [of Madiba] that will never fall,” she said during a recent media tour of the site.

Project contractor Group 5 outlined during a progress update that the hospital would be structurally completed by the end of the year before being commissioned in the first few months of next year.

While not a Green Star South Africa-rated project, Group 5 Building MD Tim Nicholls told Engineering News that the company had complied with all local regulations regarding energy efficiency when modelling and designing the hospital’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.

“Energy efficient lightbulbs have also been included in the design,” he outlined.

Nicholls added that some 35 subcontractors and 800 people have been deployed during the construction phase of the facility, which would, once operational, also serve as a paediatric and medical training facility.