Johannesburg

Health Care

Decades of apartheid have left a legacy of substandard health conditions in Johannesburg's black townships, where the incidence of infant mortality is significantly higher than that for the city's white communities, and tuberculosis remains endemic.

Located in the center of Johannesburg, Johannesburg Hospital, a State Health Service Hospital operated by the Gauteng Provincial Administration, is a multidisciplinary teaching hospital affiliated with the University of the Witwatersrand Medical School. The hospital has approximately 1,200 teaching beds in all areas of medicine. Its Level I trauma center, staffed in conjunction with the Department of Surgery of the University of the Witwatersrand, is the only comprehensive unit of its kind in South Africa and receives patients from throughout Gauteng Province, neighboring provinces, and neighboring states. The unit provides all levels of trauma care, from treatment of minor injuries to major traumas, and its staff has full 24-hour-a-day access to diagnostic, laboratory, and therapeutic support facilities. Approximately 20,000 trauma patients per year are seen in the center, and some 1,500 major resuscitations are performed annually.

Besides Johannesburg Hospital, other publicly operated hospitals include the J. G. Strijdom Hospital, the Hillbrow Hospital, and Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. The city's premier private health care facility is Morning-side Clinic. Millpark Hospital is another private facility.