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About

The School

The school was established at Karl Bremer hospital in 1959 as a “one-teacher-with-two-baskets-school”. When Tygerberg Hospital was completed the school moved over in 1973.

For many years we only had a small office and an equally small art class and storeroom. The teachers went to the wards, taking their teaching aids on trollies and taught the children at their bedsides.

Adri Maritz, principal 1997 – 2006, had a vision for larger premises and after a tremendous struggle and with the help of various donors the current school was opened in 2004 .

Since the school is resident in Tygerberg Hospital and provides an essential service to Tygerberg’s child patients, the school and our trust are partners and collaborate around raising awareness and fundraising campaigns.

The curriculum at the school focuses on perceptual development, mathematics/numeracy, language /literacy, life orientation, art and computer skills. The aim of this curriculum is to keep patients from falling behind with their schoolwork.

Ithuba unit is one of a kind. Working with learners with mental health disabilities. The form part of our vulnerable population.

Our bridging program offers the learners to fully recover before they go back into a stressful society.

We have helped learners go back and achieve their Matric Certificate. Learners when to North link Collage with bursaries. For those learners who struggles we offer the Adult Base Education program.

We are a comprehensive package of care.

Collaboration between Health and Education.

Stepping Stones Grade R class is a unique setup. Learners are referred through the Neurology department of the Tygerberg Hospital to our class. We are a one stop shop – Occupational Therapy, Speech Therapy and Psychologist to give advice and assistance. Looking at the Holistic Care of the child.

Children in the hospital don’t pay school fees. They don’t come to hospital with their school bags or stationery. We have to provide everything.

ITHUBA UNIT

Our psychiatric unit (Ithuba) was established in 2004 to accommodate a maximum of 12 pupils (up to grade 12) other psychiatric illnesses. They are aided to be integrated back into mainstream school, college, labour market and the community.

In 2011 the academic program of Ithuba changed.  We started with the Adult Education and Training stream. We introduced level 4 which is equivalent of a Grade 9.  In this way we could accommodate the specific needs of the learners with Psychiatric disorders who has dropped out of school.

We still adhere to the Curriculum of Grade 8 to 12. As we are a bridging facility. The four compulsory subjects Languages, Maths and Maths Literacy as well as Life Orientation is priority. We maintain their school subjects as far as possible.

Tygerberg Hospital School as a whole works in multi-disciplinary teams which include doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, social workers and nursing staff.

APRAXIA CLASSES

In 2013 the School started with 2 Grade R classes for learners with Apraxia. There are an Afrikaans and an English class with 10 learners per class. We follow the National Curriculum Statement and prepare the learners through a language approach. We have 2 class teachers and 2 class assistants.

HOSPITAL CLASSES

All learners in the Tygerberg Hospital are part of the school either coming to our school or are being taught at their beds.

The whole rationale behind a hospital school is for learners not to fall behind with their education while they are in the hospital. Emotionally it also provides HOPE of the learners. They get confronted with trauma while they are in hospital. To take them out of the wards and bring them to the school where they are treated as learners and not patients, provide the necessary social and emotional support.

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The Trust

The Tygerberg Hospital Children’s Trust is registered in the Republic of South Africa as a Trust and a Public Benefit Organisation with the sole objective of supporting mother and child patients at Tygerberg Hospital.

The Tygerberg Hospital Children’s Trust supports the hospital on 4 broad fronts: Child & Family-centred Care improvements, Research grants funding, Equipment & Technology upgrades, and Leadership, Education & Training opportunities. This year we aim to raise significant funding for high-impact initiatives at Tygerberg Hospital.

We are reaching out to you to help us make a positive impact. By pledging your support to the Trust, you are helping us to help Tygerberg Hospital improve their service delivery to the mothers and children of our community and beyond. South African residents can donate up to 10% of their annual income and claim it from SARS (we issue Section 18A certificates).

Founded in 2001 by a group of dedicated doctors who saw need through their lived experiences in the paediatrics unit of the hospital.

TBH admits more than 33,000 children each year, but the hospital still struggles with access to funding to address sharply growing needs and also legacy problems such as aging infrastructure and apartheid planning.

Until now the Trust has mainly focused on Community-based fundraising, great for keeping us grounded in the community but quite limited in monetary terms.

2019 Trust is implementing major change in its business processes and strategy: aims at addressing the growing needs of the mother and child patients at the Hospital. We are currently deploying a new marketing plan, including a new website and social media platforms.

More importantly, a great initiative called the Champions for Children aimed at empowering volunteers to do more.

The Tygerberg Hospital Children’s Trust, previously The Tygerberg Children’s Hospital Trust, was established in 2001 with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and Mrs. Leah Tutu as the patrons.  The trustees of the Tygerberg Hospital Children’s Trust have made themselves responsible for raising missing funds to ensure that children attending Tygerberg Hospital are cared for in a child-friendly environment, that the facilities make their parents feel welcome and comfortable, and that they receive outstanding medical and surgical care. We have been successful in doing so to a large degree because of donors such as World in Harmony.

The Trust is collaborating with Tygerberg nurses to raise awareness of prematurity as a Health issue and has made it a major campaign for the second half of this year

The Tygerberg Hospital Children’s Trust is a registered charity and PBO, and accepts donations via EFT/ bank transfer or via SnapScan. We issue Section 18A tax exemption certificates.

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The Hospital

Patients are drawn predominantly from the local community, but also from other provinces where medical assistance is more limited. The hospital sees more than 44,000 child patients each year.

Through its relationship with the University of Stellenbosch, the hospital provides training to doctors from such countries as Libya, Egypt, Congo, and Saudi Arabia.

Some of Tygerberg Hospital’s great success stories include:

  • being a recognized world leader in the diagnosis and treatment of childhood TB and HIV,
  • being the first hospital in Africa to administer life-saving drugs into the lungs of preterm babies,
  • treating the largest number of babies in South Africa weighing under 1500g,
  • being the largest baby unit in South Africa (after Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital).

Despite its medical successes and the commitment of its doctors and nurses, the hospital endures continuous funding shortfalls for several reasons.

In 2018 Tygerberg Hospital had more than 4000 neonatal admissions, but only 128 beds in the neonatal unit – with the result that the beds are turned frequently and the mattresses suffer from a huge amount of wear and tear.

Has the largest baby unit in South Africa, after Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Gauteng (7th largest hospital in the world).

Treats the largest number of babies weighing less than 1500 grams (800 per year).

Is the first baby unit in Africa to:

  • Have administered lifesaving drugs into the lungs of preterm born babies in 1992;
  • Have provided high frequency breathing assistance to critically ill babies in 1993;
  • Begin offering a regular service of cooling down babies after birth-related complications since 2008.

The Tygerberg Hospital, in addition to being the teaching hospital for four South African tertiary institutions, services a large area of the Western Cape with a population over 3.4 million people – the Northern Metro sub-districts, Khayelitsha (north of Spine Road), Eastern Tygerberg, West Coast, Cape Winelands and the Overberg rural districts.

As a public health facility, Tygerberg Hospital primarily serves the indigent community within its geographical drainage area. It is a little-known fact that Tygerberg Paediatrics Department, with 210 paediatric and 90 neonatal beds, are responsible for the care of approximately half of the 2,4 million children living in the Western Cape who require specialist medical care.

Annually, approximately 16 000 babies and children are admitted to the Hospital and in excess of 100 000 children receive specialist medical core as outpatients. It is no wonder that the Tygerberg Hospital and its dedicated doctors and nurses have been in the forefront of innovative neonatal care, for example one of the first in the world/South Africa to utilise the Kangaroo Mother care protocols.