Speech by President Nelson Mandela at the official opening of the Umtata Bedford hospital upgrade
Speech by President Nelson Mandela at the official opening of the Umtata Bedford hospital upgrade
Umtata, 9 April 1996
Master of ceremonies;
MEC for Health of the Eastern Cape
Province;
Executive officers of Engen Petroleum and JCI;
Dr MacConnachie
of the African Medical Mission;
Ladies and gentlemen;
Fellow South
Africans.
Today the eyes of our nation are focused on a corner of our country which was
for too long left out on the margins. What is to be seen here and later today at
Sabalele, government and civil society are working together to make
reconstruction and development a reality for our people wherever they live.
Nowhere has the legacy of apartheid been more shocking than in the state of
health care in the former Transkei region.
In the face of the apartheid regime's neglect, people of goodwill founded and
established an orthopaedic hospital that has come in time to service 26
hospitals and a population of around five million people. In this region of
grinding poverty, where diseases like bone and joint tuberculosis and polio are
still prevalent, such a service is the difference between life and death.
Those who initiated and built this enterprise lacked many of the basic
essentials. But they were sustained by compassion to serve people in dire need.
Personally, when I first visited the hospital just over a year ago I was most
impressed by what was being done with so few resources. But I was also deeply
distressed at how limited those resources where and at the conditions
experienced by health staff and patients.
I therefore resolved to bring together those whose needs were so urgent, with
those who have the resources to help. And so we see here today the product of a
partnership that has come to characterise our young democracy.
It is a partnership made up of business, in the form of Engen Petroleum and
Johannesburg Consolidated Investments; our democratically-elected Eastern Cape
Provincial Government; and those like the Holy Cross Sisters and the African
Medical Mission who have been the driving force that founded the Bedford
Hospital and kept it alive against all odds.
The two and a quarter million Rands generously provided by the private
sector, and the bulk infrastructure systems funded by government, have allowed
the hospital to be upgraded to better serve the people of the region. Indeed,
without the new operating theatres and intensive care unit, the hospital might
well have ground to a halt.
It is only a start and there are still great needs. But we are confident that
with such a partnership even more improvements will be made.
Ladies and gentlemen:
I believe that not only the people of this region but the nation as a whole
are grateful to those who joined hands to make the project as success. They have
set an example which should inspire other companies, other provinces, and other
communities.
Each such initiative contributes to the investment in people which is
critical for our nation's well-being and our economic development. Adequate
health-care enhances people's capacity to contribute to development.
Through partnership, whether of this kind or others, we will build a better
life for all.
It is now my pleasure officially to open the Umtata Bedford Hospital Upgrade.
Thank you.
Issued by: Office of the President
