This post is the follow-on of “Why we love Durban: The Bluff – 2“.

It has an unnamed addendum “Why Durban confuses us”.

I previously threatened to let the “photos do the talking” about this series.

However, I am scratching my brain (head) about the old Addington Children’s Hospital shown above in two of the photos.

In November 2011 a local newspaper reported: “Reconstruction of the dilapidated historic KwaZulu-Natal Children’s Hospital is to start in January (2012) with an initial tranche of R50 million injected into the project by the provincial department of health”.

If you look at my photos (end of December 2012) above and the newspaper’s photo here (November 2011) you, like the blogger, may struggle to spot the difference the initial R50 million reconstruction has made in 11 months.

In addition, we have the “parent” hospital, a hundred metres away, also undergoing a refurbishment to the tune of R142 million and suffering problems of its own (while the patients struggle in less than favourable conditions – I visited a relative there a few weeks back).

In its day, it was a top Government Hospital – not the “Admin failure ruins health system” now reported by IOL.

While the architect’s envisioned result looks appealing, I believe that both hospitals would be better suited and positioned elsewhere.

I have a sneaking feeling that the underprivileged who use the parent hospital would have preferred something something “closer to home” in more ways than one.

I am not one to promote the rich & famous and their exclusive use areas, but having two hospitals looming over an area of spotless beachfront, that the City has refurbished a number of times in recent years, seems odd.

Both hospitals could surely have become hotels or fancy residences that would have further enhanced the area and helped its upliftment.

But what do I know, I am just a photographer and the promoters of both projects must have (should have) done their planning well and investigated all options to care for the interests of the City and its people.