From humble beginnings with only one ward, the Karl Bremer Hospital, has a lot to be proud of, as it reflects on the past 60 years.
The hospital was established in 1956 and named after Dr Karl Bremer, the minister of health at the time.
Over the years, it has expanded to provide internal medicine, general surgery, anaesthesiology, obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatric care, an antiretroviral (ARV) clinic, psychiatry, psychology, dietetics and a trauma and rape centre.
The hospital had 282 beds in 2005/2006 but saw a spike in admissions (20 014), along with 51 114 outpatients and 7 364 operations over that period.
This demand put pressure on the hospital to increase its number of beds to 311 in 2015/2016, during which it had 30 676 admissions, 90 854 outpatients and 7 445 operations.
The most recent addition to the hospital is the emergency centre, commissioned in 2014.
“We are proud to serve the community of the Western Cape and, with our 786 dedicated staff who always go the extra mile for our patients, are capable of providing an excellent health care for all,” said sister Francilene Baartman, head of nursing at Karl Bremer.