Boost for Bara burn unit as foundation donates R70m for expansion

Every year, 750 people are admitted to the burns unit of Soweto's Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, with the patients often coming from across SA and parts of Africa.

For this reason, the Roy McAlpine Charitable Foundation saw the need to make a hefty donation of around R70m towards the expansion of the unit. 

On Tuesday, the new world-class facility was announced, which would see a hi-tech skin bank and tissue-engineering laboratory established. The unit will be named the Wits Roy McAlpine Burns Unit.

In a statement, Gauteng health MEC Nomathemba Mokgethi expressed gratitude to the foundation, adding that most of the department's funds have in the past year been dedicated to Covid-19, leaving integral gaps in units such as these.

Sister Maria Tsandeni has worked at the burns unit for 28 years and is going on retirement on Wednesday. The 60-year-old nurse was among the dignitaries at the breaking-ground event on Wednesday. She told TimesLIVE she was ecstatic at the prospect of an extended burns unit ward, saying it was something which the hospital needed.

“I don’t say there’s a day that goes by without us admitting a patient. Most patients that we admit here are from poverty-stricken families,” said Tsandeni.

It is usually their hard living conditions that result in them being victims of fire. From paraffin stove accidents to candle-ignited shack flames, Tsandeni said she had seen it all over her years at the facility.

She has spent her career in the burns unit — a post she was allocated after qualifying as a nurse. Being a burns unit nurse was emotionally taxing, she said.

“At times, you cry inwardly, without showing the relatives or the patients that you are  hurt because you [will find yourself] sympathising with the relatives instead of empathising with them. As time goes by, you get used to it, but it’s not to say you are ever happy to see a new patient — it’s not like seeing a customer. It hurts,” she said.

At first, counselling used to be offered to the nurses who worked in the unit but over the years, Tsendani said, such services were no longer as easily accessible as before.

Mokgethi highlighted that the burns unit is the largest in the southern hemisphere, indicating the pressures on it. “This reality alone indicates that this is the busiest unit, providing a major public service,” she said.

Mokgethi said for the longest time, the demand for burn treatment surpassed the available supply, particularly in the winter.

“The majority of the patients suffering from burn injuries are poor and in dense low-income settlements with less or no access to electricity as a basic need. During winter, we witness high volume of burn cases as a result of usage of solid fuels and flammable hydrocarbons such as paraffin.

“Therefore capacity constraints in our public healthcare facilities inadvertently disadvantage communities to access medical service and treatment.

“This has been a historical challenge that the Gauteng health department has been concerned with, since Gauteng is the most populous province.

“This financial boost will help turn around the unit, increasing the infrastructural capacity to accommodate patients who are in desperate need.”

The scars left behind by a fire accident — especially those that are not properly treated — can far surpass the physical, with Mokgethi adding that they can lead to economic loss which in turn leads to a life embedded in poverty.

“This charitable work we are embracing here today carries prospects of restoring confidence and comfort to adult and child patients who have suffered burn injuries and have changed their appearance.”

She said the health department needed to build from what it had inherited from the Roy McAlpine Charitable Foundation.

The current burns unit was founded in 1991 and is managed by Wits University and the provincial health department.

The director of the Wits Roy McAlpine Burns Unit, Prof Adelin Muganza, explained how important the donation was. “This is the start of realising our dream to establish a centre of excellence that will treat more patients and enhance research and training,” he said.

“One of our goals is to have a skin bank and tissue-engineering lab where synthetic and skin tissue for wound cover will be developed.”  

TimesLIVE