A DOCTOR at the Borders General Hospital dresses up as Santa every year to cheer up the kids who have to spend the festive season in hospital.

But the consultant paediatrician has one Christmas under his belt that he'll never forget – the year he spent December 25 playing Santa for sick children at a third world hospital in rural South Africa.

The day was a rare celebration for the kids suffering from life threatening illnesses.

In 1984, Dr John Stephen, a newly qualified paediatrician, worked for 18 months in a rural hospital run by the Salvation Army.

The then 26-year-old was the only doctor on the 130 bed ward over Christmas weekend and worked non-stop from Friday until Monday.

On Christmas Day, as well as tending to children with severe illnesses, he delivered three babies – one by caesarian – and remembers one mother calling her son Christmas, honouring the sacredness of the day.

Catherine Booth Hospital was 50 miles away from the nearest town, Durban, in a place called Amatikulu which had a population of 200,000.

In a poor, sugar cane farming community the hospital was often overwhelmed with patients as it was the only place the 200,000 locals could go for medical help:

“The hospital was full of very sick kids from two to eight years old being treated for TB, measles, gastroenteritis - a life threatening tummy bug, and near-fatal cases of malnutrition," John said.

"The kids were also at a high risk contracting cholera from inadequate water supplies.

"And, we saw lots of children who had drunk paraffin used for heating thinking it was water. They were very ill.

“We got a lot of adult admissions as well, the usual assortment of snake bites and workers from the nearby sugar cane fields with machete injuries - either from brawling with each other when drunk or accidentally slashing themselves. Those things were commonplace.

“There were too many admissions that Christmas to remember the number. Most of them arrived on foot as the buses would drop them off five miles away at the main road.

"Mothers would walk with their children on their backs and their groceries or belongings in a bag on their heads.

"I was called away to out-patients several times to tend various emergencies and had barely any sleep in 72 hours."

John has donned the white beard and red suit every December for the 16 years he has worked as a consultant paediatrician at the BGH, but his South African Christmas was one of his most memorable.

"One of the nurses taught the children Zulu Christmas carols so I learned them with my accordion and we all gathered on the veranda of the hospital to sing. All the kids learned the Zulu dances to go along with the songs so it was like a big party.

“We got all the kids Santa hats and I remember them running round in these little red hats and their night-dresses – they were so excited.

"The nurses had collected presents for the children because most of them weren't going to see their parents. It was just things like little tin cars and dolls - gifts that the nurses could gather together at short notice and with little money they had to spend.

"And these simple gifts brightened up their day and stopped them missing their parents so much. They were so ill and just to have them forget their illness for a day was important.

"It's the same here - the kids are so excited when Santa comes to pay them a visit. But the kids I saw in that hospital had nothing. They didn't even own shoes.

"We decorated the ward in tinsel and baubles, and had a very incongruous white, plastic Christmas tree sitting in the corner in the 35 degree heat."

Dr Stephen takes time out of his own Christmas every year and makes sure Santa does his rounds for kids who aren’t having Christmas at home. 

He doesn’t like to let them down and even remembers in 2010 trekking through thigh high snow for an hour and a half to get from his home in Bowden to the hospital.

“It’s just wonderful to see them smiling and laughing, I love being able to cheer them up.I’ve done it every year for so long it wouldn’t be fair to stop now!”