Hospital renovation ‘too slow’
The Addington Children's Hospital will need millions of rand to restore it to its former glory. The Addington Children's Hospital will need millions of rand to restore it to its former glory.
Much more money was needed to restore the Addington Children’s Hospital, Richard Siedle, a spokesman for NGO Friends of the Children, said yesterday.
It would take between R200 million and R250m to restore the hospital to its former glory, he said, adding that Friends of the Children and the Maternal Advanced and Child Health Department (Match) had donated R2m.
Other donors had contributed an undisclosed amount to the funding of the project, and the Department of Health had given R28m for the renovations, he said.
Yet, “the main building continues to deteriorate at an alarming rate”.
Siedle, the grandson of the hospital’s founder, Mary Siedle, said that Match, various other NGOs, the Architectural Heritage Trust and the KZN Department of Health had an agreement to work together to renovate the hospital.
He said the multimillion-rand plans had been announced in July 2010.
Since then, the KZN Children’s Hospital Trust had been formed and donations from both the health department and the private sector had been made, which had allowed restoration work to start.
At least R12.7m was needed to repair the roof and the external façade, and an extra R6m was required just to repair the roof of the old nurses’ home.
Siedle acknowledged the fund-raising efforts made by the health department, but said that Friends of the Children felt that the renovation process was taking too long and that the department’s “priorities are skewed”.
Dawne Oosthuizen, a member of Friends of the Children, said: “The building is falling apart and nothing is being done.”
The head of the KZN Department of Health, Sibongile Zungu, said that the children’s hospital had dual sources for funding.
“We have given donations, but there are also private donors,” she said.
She said that in the past financial year the department had donated R10m towards the renovations and that another R50m had been promised during the next five years.
“Phase one, which is the rebuilding of the old outpatients building and frontage, is already under way,” said Zungu.
“Plans have been drawn and construction has commenced on other structures as well. One must understand that renovations of this scale take time.
“We are not building a new hospital. We are renovating. Drawing plans and finding materials takes time.”