Most Active Stories Shots - Health Blog Mon September 24, 2012
South African Children's Hospital Closed Under Apartheid To
Reopen Originally published on Tue September 25, 2012 9:08 am A
large children's hospital in Durban, South Africa, is being
rebuilt two decades after it closed owing to apartheid. It
opened in 1931 as a facility for all races, but racial tensions
in the 1980s forced its closure. Now with Durban and the
surrounding province of KwaZulu-Natal extremely hard hit by AIDS
and tuberculosis, local leaders are hopeful they can begin
reopening the hospital early in 2013. If the rehabilitation
project is successful, it could restore one woman's dream from
almost a century ago of having a multiracial hospital in Durban
by the sea. While child mortality rates almost everywhere else
in the world have been falling, this part of South Africa has
seen the rate rise. At some maternity clinics in the region, 50
percent of pregnant women are testing positive for HIV. "HIV
contributes to almost 50 to 60 perce