Mining magnate Daphne Mashile-Nkosi Mining magnate Daphne Mashile-Nkosi
Mining magnate Daphne Mashile-Nkosi
is building a multi-
million-rand facility to aid people suffering from haemophagocytic lympho-histiocytosis (HLH), a rare disease that claimed the life of her 19-year-old daughter.
Mashile-Nkosi will launch the R51million project at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto on Friday.
The launch will coincide with her last born child Zakithi Zaza Nkosi’s birthday. Zaza, who died from HLH on November 26, 2016, would have turned 20.
“As a parent, when your child dies, you feel like you have failed her. It is painful.
“You never find closure and I am not looking for closure. I want to keep my daughter deep inside my heart where she belongs,” Mashile-Nkosi said.
She said she aims to create awareness and campaign about the disease.
“I don’t think it is a rare disease. A lot of children die every day. They just don’t know that they have HLH. A child will die in hospital or at home and a post-mortem won’t be done.
“No child must go through what Zaza went through. No parent must go through what I went through. My daughter was sick for months and doctors would not diagnose her,” said Mashile-Nkosi.
She said she had spent a lot of money on specialists leading up to November 26, 2016, when Zaza took her last breath.
“Samples were taken as far as France and Germany to try to figure out what was wrong with her. Her temperature would go up and down.
“She was in and out of hospital. It was only four months before she died that she was diagnosed with the help of professors from the Wits School of Anatomical Sciences,” she said.
Zaza was on chemotherapy for 15 weeks before she died.
Mashile-Nkosi said the other reason she was building the Zakithi Nkosi Clinical Haematology Centre of Excellence at the Soweto hospital was that public health facilities did not do stem cell transplants.
“I want to give Bara an opportunity to do stem cell transplants. Bara is the third largest hospital in the world.
“Not only does it serve people from Soweto or Gauteng, but from other provinces as well.
“You go to Bara and you find people from other countries being treated there. It would give me great honour to see people suffering from HLH getting the best treatment there,” Mashile-Nkosi said.
By constructing the ward, she would also be keeping Zaza’s memory alive.
“I still have to find the money for the project. The architects have designed the hospital, and the design that has been approved has 20 high-care wards, four hygiene wards, six treatment rooms, two lecture halls, a kitchen, showers and everything a clinic should have.
“I have been talking to a number of companies and they are keen on this project. I am going to do everything I can to ensure that this project happens,” Mashile-Nkosi said.
She said the centre would also allow for specialists to conduct extensive research on HLH.
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