Alex’s world-class Hospice and Rehab Centre celebrates its launch

The state-of-the-art Alex Hospice and Rehabilitation Centre is the realisation of a dream come true for Grace Marutlulle.

Marutlulle (82), is a community-driven woman and former nurse who has spent decades providing dignity and palliative care for the township’s most vulnerable citizens.

Marutlulle is taking her Alex Hospice Roadshow, which is a fundraising exercise to Johannesburg and Cape Town on October 27 and 28 respectively, as an integral phase in her long-term plan to secure sufficient funding for the life-changing centre’s operational costs estimated at R26 million per year.

A life spent caring for the sick and dying has only emboldened Mam’uGrace, as she’s affectionately known in the iconic township, who seeks to ensure that every person, no matter their social standing or race, is afforded quality care and comfort, especially in the last years of their life on this earth.

“My mom often said to me she always knew I was going to be a nurse because I used to bandage all the sick chickens at our home in Nongoma,” laughed the grandmother of four as she narrates the story of her upbringing. “I’ve always had a passion to care for others.”

After completing her training at Bethesda Hospital in rural northern KZN in the late 1950s, Mam’uGrace sought work opportunities in Gauteng before relocating to Limpopo to marry Abram Marutlulle. She and her three children returned to Gauteng in 1994.

This was after her husband was tragically shot and killed as a result of taxi violence, after which she worked as a nurse at Sizwe Tropical Diseases Hospital in Sandringham where she went on to train as a lab technician.

However, she remained committed to caring for those at their most vulnerable. “Seeing terminally ill people being discharged from hospital, with no-one to assist them, really stayed with me. So, I resigned and went searching for a place to start a care home.”

Mam’uGrace managed to negotiate the use of a building located in a scrapyard in Alexandra in 2000. She transformed it into a 15-bed care home to assist in servicing a population of about 900 000 impoverished citizens and in 2003, it was officially registered as a hospice, and the need for such palliative care continued to grow.

“This facility had such an impact as there weren’t many facilities like this in black communities,” she recalled. “It was during this time that the HIV/Aids pandemic was really bad. There was so much stigma around it. We’d have patients transferred from local clinics as they’d be tested and have nowhere to go.

“Often, we had to monitor them just to ensure they took their medication and then they could leave. For others it was end-of-life care. Fortunately, this has changed – the stigma is disappearing. Nobody has to die of HIV/Aids.”

After approaching the City of Johannesburg, Mam’uGrace was able to establish a 30-bed hospice at a former school. The waiting list for care continued to grow, and finally after years of hard work and negotiations, she secured a 50-year lease for new premises from the City, with funding supplied by the Johannesburg Development Agency for construction of a world-class facility.

The new hospice home, set to be officially opened in 2022, has a 48-bed capacity, with an additional frail care ward, consulting rooms for doctors, physiotherapists and psychologists, plus a dining and recreational room. There’s also a garden area, rooftop green garden, water tank and 30m tower as well as solar installation. The Alex Hospice water tank and tower was named the new landmark of Alexandra in March.

“We are so excited that this is finally becoming a reality,” said an enthusiastic Mam’uGrace. “We want to ensure all patients get the love and care they deserve.”