Location: Soweto, Gauteng

Total Beds: 24 Beds to 30 Beds (6 Beds added)

The existing Paediatric Burns Unit (PBU) at CHBAH is currently the only dedicated children burns treatment unit outside of the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town. The unit has made great progress in reducing the mortality of patients, despite a substantial increase in the number of patient admissions.

Surgeons for Little Lives (SFLL) is a non-profit organisation, that was formed by members of the Department of Paediatric Surgery at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital (CHBAH). Upon its inception in 2015, the organisation identified that the greatest challenge facing the CHBAH PBU was the limited number of Critical Care Beds. The PBU is a long running project that SFLL has tirelessly worked towards bringing to fruition.

Brief

The project brief was to increase the critical care beds from six to 11; the addition of two high care beds; the improvement of flow within the unit to mitigate hospital acquired infection; the inclusion of positive pressure rooms for the isolation of patients due to exposed wounds; the upgrade of the dressing rooms and the refurbishment of the rehabilitative support areas.

Challenges

The additional four critical care beds required new additions of 240m² to the existing unit, however, the PBU shares an existing building and operating theatre with the adjacent Adult Burns Unit (ABU). For the design of the PBU additions, parameters were set in terms of available space to expand due to the ABU ongoing additions and existing site services, and this saw the PBU design take on various iterations.

The incorporation of various colour schemes helped to create a fun, interactive and playful environment alleviating the heaviness of the injuries while ensuring the importance of the child as the main user within the spaces.

Donors

The impact of the improvement of this facility will be revolutionary to the paediatric population of the northern half of South Africa. Funding was generously given to SFLL from various donors. In addition to the donations, Graceland Architects approached various product suppliers for their collaboration. Their involvement was pivotal to the project and a total of R782 226.75 was donated to the project.

Site handover was in September 2023 and construction has faced various challenges from unforeseeable site constraints, local community involvement and existing building maintenance issues. Overcoming these challenges has taken close collaboration from the main contractor, SFLL, the professional team and CHBAH.