Mt Coke hospital to get major facelift
Ghost building to become factory for artificial limbs
By NTANDO MAKHUBU
Health Reporter
MOUNT Coke Hospital once stood proud and tall in the missionary village of the same name outside King William’s Town, bringing health services to thousands of patients from its surrounding community.
Today, it stands in ruins, its white, dilapidated buildings reminiscent of a ghost town.
When visiting the hospital yesterday, a Daily Dispatch team was confronted by paint peeling off the building’s walls and “yawning” empty window frames.
Shards of broken glass clung to some windows, creating an impression that the place was haunted.
Floors were strewn with plastic and paper, old shoes and clothes, old containers and boxes, and rodent droppings.
But Mount Coke Hospital is soon to get a new lease on life.
For this white elephant, plans are afoot by the Department of Health to give it a makeover, and turn it into a factory where artificial limbs will be made to service the Eastern Cape’s amputees.
In her policy speech last week, Health MEC, Nomsa Jajula revealed grand plans for what was once a 200-bed hospital – built by Wesleyan missionaries in 1848 and vacated by government 15 years ago.
Jajula said: “This venture, the first of its kind in Africa, is a proposed investment by the Chinese government to address the scarcity in skills service in the field of orthotics and prosthetics.”
Orthotics and prosthetics are the evaluation, fabrication and custom fitting of artificial limbs and orthopaedic braces.
The proposed turnaround in the hospital’s flagging fortunes comes as a huge relief to the Mount Coke community.
In December 1991, they watched in despair as hospital staff, patients, students and equipment were relocated to Bhisho Hospital, said resident Mlamuli Nxesi.
The community, he said, now had to travel to Bhisho for essential health services. Coupled with that, vandals carted off what had remained behind.
“Seeing the obvious lack of interest in the hospital by the Health Department, they took advantage and looted the place dry,” said resident Nolitha Davis.
“We watched them (vandals) carry bath tubs, toilet bowls, geysers and window-panes from the hospital, which did not even have a security guard,” she said.
“We watched the hospital crumble under neglect and hooliganism,” added Mirriam Didiza, who lives near the complex.
She said children had played on the hospital grounds, but it soon became a scary place with its broken windows and rodent infestation.
A section of the hospital was renovated in 2000. The old outpatients section, a children’s ward, two adult wards, and the transport and matron’s offices were renovated into a Community Health Centre, and by 2004 work had been completed.
But a nurse at the premises, who asked not to be named, said: “There is still no water connection to the place, so it remains much of a white elephant like the hospital.”
Among the ruins stand outbuildings where doctors and nurses were once housed. At the hospital’s entrance are the remains of a chapel, now only identifiable by an entrance arc.