South African Children's Hospital Closed Under Apartheid To Reopen : Shots - Health Blog : NPR: A large children's hospital in Durban, South Africa, is being rebuilt two decades after it closed owing to apartheid. It opened in 1931 as a facility for all races, but racial tensions in the 1980s forced its closure.
Now with Durban and the surrounding province of KwaZulu-Natal extremely hard hit by AIDS and tuberculosis, local leaders are hopeful they can begin reopening the hospital early in 2013.
If the rehabilitation project is successful, it could restore one woman's dream from almost a century ago of having a multiracial hospital in Durban by the sea.
While child mortality rates almost everywhere else in the world have been falling, this part of South Africa has seen the rate rise. At some maternity clinics in the region, 50 percent of pregnant women are testing positive for HIV.
