The Children's Hospital in Durban

Writing about the history of Children’s Hospitals in South Africa, and indeed Hospitals band health institutions, is part of the struggle of memory against forgetting. The South African post-apartheid state has directed a vast array of resources towards children and their care and has yet to achieve its own bench marks for child health, child safety and child development. Today as we see the rise of plans for a new Children’s Hospital taking form in Johannesburg under the Nelson Mandela Foundation wing, and as we watch the growth of the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, it is particularly painful to regard the wreck next to Addington Hospital on South Beach in Durban, where once a world class Children’s Hospital stood and functioned. This paper is an attempt to frame the issues; to trace the history of the massive effort that went into the erection of the hospital in the first place; to reclaim it from a white settler viewpoint; and to provide solid and detailed evidence for health planners concerned with children’s vulnerability, their health needs, and their inherent rights.