Officials gathered at Tygerberg Hospital on Tuesday, to celebrate the state facility’s milestone of being the first in the country to perform robotic surgery.
Western Cape health bosses have stressed the importance of also rolling out state-of-the-art technologies in the public healthcare sector.
Groote Schuur Hospital is the other health facility that will also set out to utilise the Da Vinci robot in its surgical procedures.
Western Cape head of Health, Doctor Keith Cloete, emphasised the goal to make quality healthcare available.
“As much as we can have a Da Vinci robot and we can have the patient experience what we can see in front of us, on the high end as much as we can go to communities and deliver medicines for people and anything else in between,” Dr Cloete said.
Surgeons said that the Da Vinci Xi Robot offered much better visualisation of the body tissues being operated on.
The robot also allows theatre staff to monitor the blood supply of an organ and helps them reduce the chance of major complications.