By Millicent Mthenjwa

Ambulance sirens are heard every split second in and around Bulawayo, going through red robots, warning motorists, cyclists and pedestrians to get off the road as this car with flickering lights disappears into thin air.

But how ironic it is that the same emergency vehicles which ferry patients to health institutions get to the casualty ward and nurses drag their feet to attend to a life about to be lost.

A daylong investigation at one of the Government-run hospital, United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) revealed that the service delivery is poor and the amenities are at a sorry state.

When someone is not feeling well in body the first reaction is to seek medical expertise to diagnose the malady, with so much trust put upon doctors whatever ailment detected medical procedure stated by the medical practitioners is followed.

Despite the impediments and financial, religious and other constraints which may be there, patients start up the proposed road to their health and well-being.

But when one is referred to UBH, dreading to go there is justified because some nurses here lack a sense of urgency when attending to patients.

One patient on the particular day was a sick HIV-positive pregnant woman accompanied by both parents and this reporter observed the troubled parents piteously asking to be attended to, seeing that their daughter was in her second trimester, anything could happen to the unborn child.

Tossing and turning the pregnant girl lay on the benches for more than four hours, making the matter worse was that the parents  fearing for their daughter’s deteriorating health, boarded a bus from their rural home at dawn, got to the hospital way before noon now approaching dusk no-one was forthcoming with feedback on what the problem was and the way forward.

She had been complaining of being hungry and at least one good deed I thought I would witness was of a nurse who had promised to bring her a meal prepared for the admitted patients, unfortunately I should have missed that part when I blinked.

A woman who could probably be in her early 40s had a needle on her arm for about two hours long after her drip had been finished.

The woman was heard crying in agony saying she longer knew if she was still sane but what she was sure of was that the pain and discomfort she was feeling from the injection was real.

“Veduwe ndakatadza here kuti ndiwuye pano semurwere?’’ she said.