Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto- A history of medical care 1941-1990, Simonne Horwitz(OUT OF PRINT NEW)

Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto - A history of medicalcare 1941-1990 ,  Simonne Horwitz

Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto illustrates how this rapidlygrowing, underfunded but surprisingly effective institution found the nichethat allowed it to exist, to provide medical care to a massive patient body andat times even to flourish in the apartheid state. The book offers new ways ofexploring the history of apartheid, apartheid medicine and health care. Thelong history of Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital (its full current name) orBara, as it's popularly known, has been shaped by a complex set of conditions.Established in the early 1940s, Bara stands on land purchased by the Cornishimmigrant John Albert Baragwanath in the late nineteenth century. He set up arefreshment post, trading store and hotel on the site - in what is now Soweto -which was a one day journey by ox-wagon from Johannesburg. The hotel becameaffectionately known as 'Baragwanath Place' (the surname is Welsh, from 'bara'meaning 'bread' and 'gwenith' meaning' wheat'). The land was then bought byCorner House Mining Group and later taken over by Crown Mines Ltd. but wasnever mined. The British government bought the land in the early 1940s to builda military hospital but by 1947, Baragwanath ceased to operate as a militaryhospital and under the auspices of the Transvaal Provincial Administration acivilian hospital was opened with 480 beds. Patients were transferred from the'non-European' wing of the Johannesburg General Hospital in the 'white' area ofJohannesburg. Links were immediately forged with the University of theWitwatersrand and Bara would over time become one of its largest teachingcentres. This link brought medical students and their teachers into directcontact with apartheid in the medical sphere. This book will contribute tostudies of the history of apartheid that have begun to provide a more nuancedaccount of its workings. The history of Baragwanath and of the doctors andnurses who worked there tells us much about apartheid ideology and practice, aswell as resistance to it, in the realm of health care.