ZUID-AFRIKAANS HOSPITAL: World-Class Care at Its Heart

ZAH has become renowned for the unique healing environment it offers, where patients have access to welcoming outdoor gardens and recreational facilities that are all designed to promote and prioritise health and wellbeing. Pragmatically, this is twinned with a far-reaching reputation for the state-of-the-art equipment it deploys and cutting-edge theatres, all wrapped up with the very best in nursing care and top-class doctors providing expert care, actively involved with their patients. 

A holistic setting boasts outdoor gardens and verandas to offer the additional restorative benefit of being able to sit outside, rest, and recuperate amid beautiful surroundings. Biokinetic rehabilitation facilities are offered at the hospital, while staff from therapeutic fields provide guidance for prevention, rehabilitation, pre- and post-operative care.

The overarching mission of this private, independent, and non-profit hospital is to maintain a caring and healing hospital culture, and sustain a tranquil environment that promotes all-round patient recovery.

SUPERIOR SERVICE

“Our specialist doctors and staff strive to offer specialist service of superior quality, whilst advancing toward world class clinical innovation,” relays ZAH of this tireless bid for the best. “Although the building façade of the hospital has changed, the service and very high standards that generations of families grew to know and trust can still be found at Zuid-Afrikaans Hospital.

“It remains a specialist hospital of choice for our patients and specialists that offers the highest level of patient-centred care.”

Coming up to 120 years at the beating heart of Muckleneuk in Berea Street, the birth of one of the oldest private hospitals in South Africa in fact came about as a direct result of the bloodiest war ever fought on South African soil, namely the Anglo-Boer War between 1899 and 1902. In 1904, the ZAH’s doors opened on the site where it still stands today, as a facility with a six-bed capacity boasting an operating theatre and X-ray facilities. Ward A was built in 1951, giving the hospital a capacity of 53 beds, in the same year that the Bronberg Pharmacy was added, X-ray facilities extended and three extra surgical theatres constructed.

Over the next 35 years a children’s ward was adjoined and the facility’s kitchen was extended. More beds were added to Ward A, and Ward C joined it, as well as two further operating theatres. One of the first crèches at a South African hospital was then started for the children of hospital staff and an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) arrived. The hospital then ramped up even further these improvements to commemorate its 100^th operating year by unveiling an entire new wing, containing a brand-new entrance, pharmacy, Cardiovascular Unit and 18 ICU beds.

More recently, the hospital has cut the ribbon on state-of-the-art new Paediatric and Multi-ICU units, and completed and commissioned a replacement, upgraded Biplane Cathlab. “We look forward to serving our patients with cutting-edge technology,” ZAH enthused at the time, of this fully integrated Electro Physiology Laboratory (EP Lab) which includes a new 3D mapping system to create a multidimensional image of the heart’s anatomy.

No stone is left unturned, no detail overlooked in refining and uplifting this already foremost, forward-thinking of facilities, right down to the upgrading of the main parking area in order to improve the ease of entering and exiting via a one-way flow. The newest, and arguably most visible and prominent, developments came to the hospital’s physical capacity, as it stands today proudly able to accommodate some 181 patients in a first-class facility; 42 of these new beds followed a rather extraordinary allocation on the part of the Department of Health, which regulates the total number of beds that can be offered.

CARING HEART

When it comes to hospital choice, of course, everything hangs on the quality of care and the overall healing culture on show, and here there is a wealth of key services and procedures which the hospital’s array of expert practitioners are on hand to deliver. Core disciplines range from cardiology and cardiothoracic and orthopaedic through to plastic and reconstructive surgeries and ear nose and throat (ENT) surgery, alongside paediatric services, and internal medicine.

There is one area where ZAH is especially eminent, though. “The hospital is renowned for its cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery to our well-respected patients,” it explains. “Our cardiologists have interests in diverse aspects of cardiology, and highly-skilled surgeons serve patients with conditions related to the heart and lungs.” It is estimated that around 11,000 South African children are born with a heart defect each year, with congenital heart disease the most common type of birth defect.

Approximately 4,500 of this number require life-saving surgical intervention, and through prompt and proper treatment, the prognosis for most of these children is outstanding, with at least 85% of them expected to survive to adulthood. Survival is, however, entirely dependent on a timely diagnosis and urgent medical intervention.

“We have so many children with heart problems, and who need our help,” was the response of Professor Lindy Mitchell, cardiologist at ZAH who in February came together with medical technology firm Vertice and Operation Healing Hands, a medical welfare organisation, to help several children access life-saving procedures as part of a special project to mark the end of Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Week.

With all medical personnel offering their services for free, ZAH sponsored theatre time and hospital facilities, while Vertice funded the closure devices. The aim is to hit a total of 20 children helped in this way over the course of 2023, in a bid to begin to change the fate of those suffering for the hereditary heart condition reliant upon the capacity and availability within government hospitals. “The state can only help up to a point, and there is such a long waiting list of children who need this heart surgery,” Professor Mitchell told Maroela Media.

“We have been working with Vertice for years to make this dream of helping come true.”

Well over a century since its establishment and with ZAH today closing in on 200 bed, boasting modern theatres and technologically-advanced equipment to underpin its care with patients’ needs firmly at its core, there is little doubt that this will remain the hospital of choice for several centuries to come. “The hospital has received the Discovery Top 20 Private Hospitals award for several consecutive years,” ZAH closes, “and we constantly strive to remain one of the top 20 hospitals of South Africa. A journey to healing begins the moment that patients choose Zuid-Afrikaans Hospital.”