SAKHIWO HEALTH SOLUTIONS: SAKHIWO Stands for World-Class Healthcare

With specialisms ranging from health planning, health technology, project management and consulting and advisory services relating to hospital infrastructure development to commissioning and facility maintenance management, SAKHIWO’s breadth of capabilities allows it to deliver an integrated, all-inclusive service.

“We are able to serve as a private implementing agent, turnkey professional service provider or programme manager with multi-faceted functionalities,” the company expands. “We also offer services on an ad hoc basis as required by the client.”

Originally established as a multi-disciplinary development agency for health facilities. Its success in pulling together some of the best expertise in South Africa allowed SAKHIWO, after a decade of leading the way in crafting infrastructure for many health institutions, to broaden its reach into other spheres of public sector infrastructure development.

COMPREHENSIVE RESUMÉ

Today, this makes it an all-encompassing implementing and program management agent with a primary focus on public sector infrastructural development. Hospitals and other health facilities are of course at the forefront of its concerns, but also span schools and educational facilities, institutional buildings and prisons, office complexes and more.

Similarly to its evolution into an ever-wider range of specialist areas, also setting SAKHIWO apart is its unique ability to bring a project from concept to reality, implementing every step of the process right from the initial stages of financial viability to planning and design and construction management. Contrary to the many providers who offer a singular approach, constituting of merely equipment solutions or staffing offerings on their own, SAKHIWO sets the foundations of a project and sees it right through to procurement of equipment, training of staff and ongoing facilities management.

“SAKHIWO Health Solutions is the leading turnkey professional service provider in the public healthcare sector in Africa,” the company resumes, “and covers all aspects of hospital infrastructure development.” In this way, SAKHIWO has evolved into the continent’s dominant player in the sector by becoming synonymous with quality and delivery, and along this journey has been the driving force behind some monumental developments. “We are committed to excellence in design and the implementation of high quality, efficient and cost-effective solutions,” is SAKHIWO’s overarching mission. “We aim to respond accurately to the transformation of health care by developing outstanding facilities.”

In South Africa, highlights include Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane, a 530-bed, R1.5 billion facility converted from an existing old barrack-style hospital condemned some years prior. It perfectly encapsulated, and to continues to demonstrate, SAKHIWO’s transformational impact on health services in South Africa, in exactly the same vein as Frere Hospital Oncology and ICU for the Department of Health in the Eastern Cape and also on show at Sipetu and Thabazimbi District Hospitals.

SAKHIWO is well underway with Limpopo Central Hospital in Polokwane and Siloam Hospital in Vhembe District, Limpopo for the National Department of Health, the latter of which was identified as a National Presidential Priority in 2011. Its footprint is not listed to South Africa, either, spreading across the continent with significant undertakings in Zimbabwe, Namibia and the 450-bed Nampula New General Hospital in Mozambique.

“SAKHIWO is partnering with local strategic partners in every country in which it operates, in order to add value and contribute to the business,” it explains, and this has been crucial to its success in so many various spheres and settings as it further entails training, mentorship and a transfer of skills. This recognition of the power of collaboration has also been integral to SAKHIWO’s unrivalled expertise in the South African healthcare sector in building funding models and finance solutions, working instead with international partners.

“We are seeking to work with our international partners to look at alternative funding models that will enable governments to deliver on social infrastructure, such as in healthcare,” CEO Dr Tebogo Mphake told us. “We are dealing with major infrastructure projects – hospitals the size of Limpopo Central Hospital of 488 beds – which are being identified by governments as major drivers of growth. From that perspective, we are very bullish about our business and what the prospects look like.” 

UNTRAMMELLED TRANSFORMATION

At its completion, Cecilia Makiwane Hospital was the single biggest hospital built in the country since 1994 and replete with world-leading technology, in addition to R360 million of new equipment and furniture. Sub-Saharan Africa is becoming a known as a bastion of this type of innovation for digital health services, set to play an increasingly important role in Africa’s healthcare sector. 

“There is a need to focus on health technology across a broader continuum of healthcare,” Mphake asserted. “Focusing on equipment and ensuring we have the best available, but also ensuring that the equipment is serviced and maintained properly. Therein lies an opportunity to tap into the digital health space in terms of focus on how we can use IoT to ensure processes in hospitals are improved and to ensure, from a patient care perspective, that maintenance and management of medical equipment is first class.”

These factors, along with the litany of others that have come to define SAKHIWO Health Solutions, have ensured that even the best attempts of the COVID-19 panic to wreak havoc upon every aspect of society have not derailed its overwhelming pipeline of prospects. “The pandemic and the resultant economic slowdown, in our view, has not necessarily meant that there is decreased demand on our services,” clarified Mphake.

“In fact, what happened is that it has exposed the soft underbelly of our healthcare systems throughout the world. Almost everyone realised that our healthcare systems are not geared towards managing and containing this and other possible future pandemics. What that has done is create pent up demand for infrastructure in order to ensure our healthcare systems, around the world, are resilient.”

Certainly not its biggest, but among its most important partnerships has been in the completion of CBMADT’s eight-bed paediatric lower high care unit project at Sebokeng Hospital in Gauteng. The Carte Blanche Trust commenced the initiative back in 2014, culminating in the creation of a six-bed unit in 2016 which has served its purpose expertly until now and an even more impactful development, CBMADT says.

“Thanks to the repeat support of South32 as principal donor, and the Carte Blanche Trust’s stalwart partners Sakhiwo Health Solutions and the Hospital Design Group, the Carte Blanche Trust has now been able to construct and equip a new eight-bed Paediatric Lower High Care Unit, directly alongside its original 2016 project.” Adding critical care infrastructure for 14 children in the Sedibeng Municipality, it responds to the needs of vulnerable children in the area and evinces the true care running through the heart of SAKHIWO, as it seeks to be the outstanding leader in health infrastructure development meeting the needs of every client and community.