An exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first heart transplant performed by Professor Chris Barnard on the third of December in 1967, has opened at the Cape Town hospital named after him.
Barnard’s many awards, medals and other memorabilia, including his personalised stethoscope, are on display for a week in the foyer of the hospital.
Heart surgeon Dr Otto Thaning says the exhibition has been put together in collaboration with the Chris Barnard Museum in Beaufort West and Groote Schuur Hospital, where the first transplant was performed.
“All of the memorabilia have been put together by one of our anaethesists, he actually made the photographs that you see and mounted the various memorabilia and wrote them and had them framed, I mean all these things were lying in boxes and now they are here for everybody to see in this art form which is quite amazing, it really is marvelous.”
