What We Do

Story About Us
Where it all began

What we do?

Umduduzi is a mobile hospital-based team. We see children in all the different hospitals within the eThekwini region and sometimes in their homes. We also provide telephonic consultation to the rest of the hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal. At present we do not have an office or a hospice building.

Palliative Care

Compassionate care for children experiencing health-related suffering.

This includes:

  • Hospital-based care and support
  • Advice on the control of pain and other symptoms
  • Supportive counselling for children and families, including difficult decision making
  • Home visits and assessments
  • Advance care planning
  • End of life care when needed
  • Support through bereavement
  • Teaching, training and mentoring of health care professionals and medical students.

Umduduzi treats children as people, not just as patients, and seeks to ensure that children with life-threatening or life-limiting conditions receive the best possible care and comfort.

Play Programmes

Play is an integral part of healing.

  • Prince Mshyeni Memorial Hospital: A structured play programme takes place daily, facilitated by a play co-ordinator, Nomandla. The children are exposed to fun, gross motor play and fine motor skills – all promoting healing and distracting from the misery of hospital admission.
  • King Dinuzulu Hospital Multi-Drug Resistant TB Unit: Sandra runs an early childhood development programme for these children. They come from around the province and are admitted for lengthy periods of time during which they are at risk for regression of their milestones.

Palliative Care Clinic:

Umduduzi runs a weekly palliative care clinic at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital. The aim is to provide ongoing support to children with health-related suffering and their families. We also support their primary medical treating teams. Umduduzi cannot see every sick child in the province but can promote holistic care and support others to provide it.

In-Patient Palliative and Hospice Care:

Sadly, there is no dedicated Children’s Hospice in Durban although some units will admit the occasional child, while others will only admit adults. It is an Umduduzi dream to have such a facility one day.

Want to get involved?

Umduduzi offers all our services within the many communities we serve completely free of charge, thus we are 100% dependent on sponsorship and donations to run our programmes. We rely on the generosity of our donors to enable us to carry out the important work we do bringing comfort and relief to the children of Durban and surrounding areas living with life-threatening or life-limiting illnesses and their families.

GIVE

Every donation enables members of the Umduduzi Team to continue doing the vital work we do every day.

 

Sponsor

A direct deposit into our banking account is always very welcome! 

 

 

JOIN

We hope you will consider becoming a member of our 100 Club of supporters – that someone we can rely on to help us cover our monthly costs.