Ventilators will save more lives
Ventilators donated to Kalafong hospital have made a huge impact and will help save more lives.
Saving people’s lives is what Kalafong hospital strives for and that is what it will be able to do more of with the new ventilator machines donated by Barloworld Equipment.
And already the machines have made an impact on the hospital’s casualty ward and people’s lives have been saved.
On Wednesday morning an official handover of the ventilators to the hospital was held.
Professor Mimi Geyser, head of the accident and emergency unit, said one ventilator was donated earlier this year and the other one recently.
“We now have four ventilators, the two donated ones and the older ones. It would however be ideal to at least have about 5 or more to cater for the community we serve,” she said.
Geyser said before the donation, there were difficulties with the resuscitation of patients because ventilators were not enough.
“These new ventilators have helped and will help more to prevent deaths,” she said, adding that with the older ones the risk of equipment failure was higher.
Kalafong hospital caters for so many people of the west, the hospital has about ten patients a day that need resuscitation. In a month that is about 300.
Doctor Elizabeth Dhlamini said: “The old ventilators are still working and are maintained regularly. Because we have such limited resources we have to make use of what is working.”
She said it was great that they had two new ventilators that would last them a couple of years and would help them treat more people.
Dhlamini explained that the ICU at the hospital had only eight beds and caters to both the trauma and medical patients.
“Ideally the trauma and medical ICU should be separate units. Another ICU unit would be better with more beds if possible,” Dhlamini said.
The donation was made possible by the SA medical and education foundation (SAME).
A few years ago, Dianne Pols director of SAME visited the hospital to offer her assistance.
Geyser said Pols asked the hospital to give her its wish list, and the list including a renovated emergency unit.
“Last year on 17 July, we had a new unit at the hospital. The unit did not have ventilators at the time but earlier this year, SAME made sure we got ventilators and we thank them for their support,” she said.
Pols at the handover ceremony, said all they were doing for the hospital was for the community and staff. She said when the hospital gave her its wishlist, SAME stepped in and helped.
“The hospital told us it needed ventilators for the newly renovated unit and we approached Barloworld Equipment, who donated the two ventilators,” Pols explained.
Lesibana Ledwaba, divisional executive director of strategy, risk and operational transformation at Barloworld Equipment said his company worked towards building sustainable communities and the company’s donation was in light of that.
Ledwaba said, if breadwinners could not be resuscitated because there was a lack of ventilators, then families would lose out and children could no longer go to school and Barloworld wanted to avoid that.
“We thank the SAME foundation for actually approaching us to help, and the hospital for agreeing to our partnership with them,” said Ledwaba.
He said Geyser said the new ventilators were the Rolls Royce of ventilators.
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