Greta was born in England where she trained as a paediatric nurse.She married a doctor, Pierre Schoeman, in 1968 and a year later they moved to South Africa.
It was her father’s death from cancer that prompted her to return to England to study as a hospice nurse at the Sir Michael Sobell House in Oxford and to have an understanding of the system of hospices which were successfully run in Britain at that time.
Her son, Ken Schoeman, said his mother had felt that she had to do something to still the suffering of the many people who were struck down by this dreaded disease.
On her return to South Africa and with a new set of qualifications, she opened the first in-patient unit for terminally ill patients in South Africa, in her home in Kings Road in Westville.
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