Inside Story S1992E03 - Welcome To Hell

Just when majority rule is in sight, South Africa's black townships are in despair. Murders, rapes, broken families and abandoned babies are at record levels, and nowhere is the crisis greater than in Soweto, where the rebellion against apartheid began. This film focuses on the sprawling township's hospital, which every night is packed with the broken, bleeding bodies from another day's violence. Against all the odds, the hospital staff struggle to save the victims of a community at war with itself. More than 100 victims of assault arrive in the casualty department every night. Bernard Rabinowitz , a surgeon at the vast Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, says: "We get 3,500 to 5,550 stabbed chests and 5,000 to 7,000 bad head injuries - every year." And now, adding to this suffering, is an increasing Aids problem.