/ 8 June 2012

Bringing services to your doorstep

The recently completed 300-bed Germiston hospital on the East Rand was built in line with the Gauteng Provincial Government's Green Energy Stategy.
The recently completed 300-bed Germiston hospital on the East Rand was built in line with the Gauteng Provincial Government's Green Energy Stategy.

The new 760-bed mega hospital will house 13 hectares of health care services.  Upon completion the new construction will replace the existing Natalspruit Hospital, which could not be extended because extensive assessments by engineers revealed a high dolomite risk, which prevents the construction of high-rise buildings.

The new hospital will provide socio-economic developments to the area and also increase the feasibility of commercial developments, thus creating more sustainable job opportunities. Furthermore, the community is also benefiting from the construction of new access roads which will enable emergency services and communities to gain faster and safer access to this major public facility.

Green hospital for Gauteng
The recently completed Germiston Hospital on the East Rand was built in line with the Gauteng Provincial Government’s Green Energy Strategy. The boilers of this 300-bed regional hospital are powered by solar heating instead of the coal-fed boilers used in other hospitals.

The hospital also has a back-up power supply system which will provide 100% power to the entire hospital if the primary power supply fails. This differs from the system, used at other hospitals, which only provides back-up power to critical areas such as operating theatres, neo-natal wards and intensive care units.

Bheki Nkosi, MEC of the Department of Infrastructure Development, said: “The completion of this new public facility is confirmation of the commitment of our government to addressing the needs of communities through adequate social infrastructure and speedy, timeous service delivery.”

Among the numerous features of the hospital are a helipad, gateway clinic and crèche, a psychiatric ward, a radiology department, a crisis centre, allied services, a neo-natal unit with “father care” beds, a blood bank and a three-bed paediatric intensive care unit.

During the construction of the hospital a total of 7 714 Expanded Public Works Programme work opportunities were created, exceeding by 60% the 3 093 work opportunities initially planned for the project.
Germiston Hospital has been delivered within the 1 096 calendar days stipulated and within the allocated budget of R48.9-million.

Project 274 helps refurbish health infrastructure
“The implementation of Project 274 started in 2011, when the Department of Infrastructure Development (DID) embarked on an initiative to replace aged and deteriorating electro-mechanical equipment at various health institutions across Gauteng,” says the Gauteng MEC for Infrastructure Development, Bheki Nkosi. 

The focus is on replacing and refurbishing boilers, lifts, laundries, chillers, autoclaves, electrical reticulation, and the changeover switches of generators. The department has also managed to address some of the backlogs in statutory maintenance.

The project was called “274” because the Department of Health, which is DID’s client in this initiative, originally had a budget of R274-million for the upgrades to electro-mechanical equipment.

In line with Project 274, the DID has completed the installation of the new laundry at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, to the value of R16.5-million. “We have also completed the conversion of the kit room into a new high-care maternity ward to the value of R1.3-million at the same institution,” said Nkosi.

Other Project 274 achievements include new laundry equipment at the Transvaal Memorial Institute to the value of R15.5-million, the installation of new autoclaves worth R12-million at 12 health institutions and the upgrade of electrical reticulation at 15 health institutions, to the value of R26-million. Kalafong Hospital maternity ward has been totally renovated at a cost of R4.3-million and the Forensic Pathology Unit in Diepkloof, Soweto, has been upgraded.