The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu Senior Reporter
MANAMA Mission Hospital in Gwanda, Matabeleland South Province, is struggling to collect over $100 000 from the largely poor rural community it is serving.
Speaking to journalists touring the institution, the hospital administrator, Mrs Sizile Dube, said the debt kept growing.“We are owed about $109 000 by the community that seeks medical assistance here and the debt is not really reducing. Patients cannot afford even medication that costs $1, as a result we just dispense the medication,” said Mrs Dube.
She said the patients always promised to come and pay what they owe but they hardly ever return owing to the fact they did not have funds to settle their debts. This move has seen the hospital failing to secure necessary supplies.
This situation is not only unique to Manama as many health institutions in Zimbabwe are owed millions of dollars by patients who have not paid them over a period of years with some debts dating back to the Zimbabwe dollar era.
Manama Mission Hospital, which has a catchment area of over 7 000 people, is facing a myriad of challenges besides the financial crisis. The hospital is failing to secure essential drugs for its patients.
“Securing of essential drugs is such a problem for us in this area; we sometimes experience delays in receiving these medications. We hope this can be rectified in the near future,” Mrs Dube said.
She, however, said their supplies of antiretrovirals was not affected as they had enough drugs.
Dr Nzwisisayi Chokuda, the medical superintendent, said there was also a challenge of food for the patients.
“Food for the patients is generally limited here; the diet is very poor too. We are limited to few supplies so it also affects the health of the patients,” she said.
She said the patients were fed on sugar beans and vegetables with no other varieties, which defeats the purpose of trying to get a patient back to good health.
Patients are also unable to have X-rays and full blood count tests performed on them due to the unavailability of machinery, forcing them to travel to other health centres which are too far from the community.
Dr Chokuda also said HIV and Aids was a challenge in many cases.
“We have many of our HIV patients living in neigbouring South Africa and Botswana, and in Botswana there is no free treatment for them such that when they eventually come back home they are very ill and die fast,” she said.
She said it was difficult to assist many of the patients who come from Botswana as they would not have been on any antiretroviral therapy.
Botswana has over the years declined to give Zimbabweans free treatment even for those that are in prisons.
