During the catastrophic HIV pandemic that escalated into a national crisis in South Africa, a single, remarkable hospital on a high ridge in the port city of Durban emerged as an internationally recognised community of care, treatment and research. The story of McCord Hospital is an intersection of faith, medical pioneers, community making and knowledge production. Written by two historians and a medical doctor, the book takes its title – meaning ‘give us hope’ or ‘we give hope’ in isiZulu – from the name of McCord’s HIV clinic. The authors trace the arc of McCord Hospital from its humble roots in the early twentieth century through to its role as a global leader in the fight against HIV, bringing to life the tensions, triumphs and challenges of this era. Sinikithemba is a history of the complex interface between medicine and society. It is impossible to understand the development of McCord’s innovative HIV programmes without coming to an understanding of McCord as a dynamic community of care, as a place sustained by thousands of people in Durban, and as a mission hospital that fought for survival and retained its sense of purpose under successive South African governments. As McCord scaled up its treatment programme and drew significant support through PEPFAR funding, the wider hospital community expanded to include scientists and professors, clinicians and researchers, midwives and nurses, volunteers and donors, patients and families, provincial officials and philanthropists, pop stars and prayer groups. At the height of a global crisis, in the city at the epicentre of the South African epidemic, hope was laboured into being at a hospital with a unique ethos and a long history of people-centred care. Sinikithemba tells that story.