Donation boosts paediatric facilities at Chris Hani Baragwanath
JOHANNESBURG, November 2020 – Surgeons for Little Lives, a non-profit organisation working to save the lives of sick children, has received a R310 000 donation from Netstar for critically important high-care electronic equipment.
The donation has gone towards purchasing six electronic vital signs monitors for Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital’s Paediatric Surgery wards, to benefit 2500 – 3000 patients per year with constant monitoring of heart rates and blood pressure in the high care ward.
Surgeons for Little Lives is committed to uplifting the lives of children needing life-changing surgery and high levels of care.
“We are deeply grateful to Netstar for this donation,” said NGO chairman Professor Jerome Loveland, head of paediatric surgery at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital and Wits University. “The donation will go a long way to helping Surgeons for Little Lives fund specific projects to improve the care given to the children served by the Department of Paediatric Surgery in Greater Gauteng and its surrounding provinces.”
The donation is part of Netstar’s ongoing social and financial support programme in the communities where it is active through its vehicle tracking and fleet-management business.
“We are grateful to be able to assist in the great work that Surgeons for Little Lives is doing,” said Netstar MD Pierre Bruwer. “We are also proud to be part of a journey to improve the care that children receive in the country.”
Prof Loveland said that the NGO’s primary objective was to raise money to fund specific projects to improve the care given to the children served by the Department of Paediatric Surgery in Gauteng and surrounding provinces.
Its most urgent current projects include: a dedicated paediatric burns operating theatre; support of the ongoing expressive art project for patients recovering from surgery, and the operation of a lactation unit and breast milk bank.
“We’re also working to improve the care and treatment of paediatric surgical and paediatric burns patients, to better support the caregivers and families of these patients, and to improve care facilities at hospitals,” said Prof Loveland.
Surgeons for Little Lives run by a small group of paediatric surgeons and ordinary people, passionate about uplifting the lives of less fortunate children needing life-changing surgery by raising funds to provide world-class standards of care where state hospitals face capacity constraints.
