Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Tuesday paid warm tribute to the staff of Cape Town’s Tygerberg hospital, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
”God wants you to know just how proud God is of you,” he said at the annual thanksgiving service for the complex’s children’s hospital, of which he and wife Leah are patrons. ”Thank you, God, for all these beautiful, beautiful people.”
The hospital is the largest in the Western Cape, and the second largest in the country after Johannesburg’s Chris Hani-Baragwanath.
Over half a million patients receive specialist treatment there every year, and another 92 000 use its trauma and resuscitation facility.
One of its clinics is the biggest antiretroviral treatment centre in the province.
Tutu told several hundred staff, patients and guests at the ceremony that they should thank God for the ”wonderful blessings” he had showered on Tygerberg.
He said the media were full every day of the awful things happening in the world, such as events in Darfur.
”People are being killed. People are being … I mean, it’s just awful, awful, awful. Everywhere, nearly, Zimbabwe, Northern Ireland. The Middle East.
”I mean, would you like to live in Gaza? There are so many awful things.”
But ”and this is a big but”, there are also many beautiful things happening.
”Some of the best things are those that take place here in Tygerberg Hospital,” he said.
”Since I’ve got this hotline, and I know what’s happening in heaven, I want to tell you God is smiling.”
He spoke of the ”incredible gentleness and devotion” he had witnessed being shown by doctors and nurses in the children’s hospital, an image which he said should be shown in the media to remind people that there were beautiful things happening, things that were ”simply miracles”. — Sapa