The only full-time nurse at the Saartjie Baartman Centre, Sister Leonie Weyers, is not only a caregiver to her patients but also helps them to “feel beautiful” again. Biénne Huisman spent time with her at the shelter situated on gang-war turf in Manenberg.
Sister Sandra Bryant runs her clinic in a lilac painted room, where glitter cream and a disco ball does not seem out of place next to scissors, syringes, and needles. She tells Spotlight’s Biénne Huisman about working with Professor Christiaan Barnard, the adrenaline of being in the operating theater, and why she has a tattoo of an anatomical heart.
Within South Africa’s beleaguered public health sector – unsettled by budget cuts, understaffing, and divisive NHI legislation – cutting edge surgical robots that have been used to perform more than 600 surgeries at two Cape Town public hospitals are beacons of excellence that offer a glimmer of hope. Spotlight’s Biénne Huisman visited Dr Tim Forgan at Tygerberg Hospital to learn more.
From Antarctica to Haiti, to red zones in Cape Town, Dr Shaheem de Vries is accustomed to getting his hands dirty while saving lives. He tells Spotlight’s Biénne Huisman about the new challenges he faces as CEO of Groote Schuur Hospital.
Dr Juli Switala (42) has treated children in Nigeria, helped fatally ill patients during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, and delivered babies at a hospital in Afghanistan against a backdrop of upheaval and violence. But nowhere cuts close to her heart quite like Brooklyn Chest – the tuberculosis (TB) hospital on Cape Town’s north-western fringes. Biénne Huisman chatted with Switala about her work in hospitals around the world, the challenges of treating kids with TB, and going for a run to get away from it all.
