The Sunday News
GOVERNMENT is planning to build new state-of-the-art hospitals at Harare and Mpilo central hospitals to replace some old structures at the two health facilities, a Cabinet minister has revealed.
Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr David Parirenyatwa, said structures at Harare and Mpilo central hospitals no longer meet modern hospital standards and need replacement.
Harare and Mpilo, together with Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals are the country’s largest referral hospital complexes.
“We need to look at these two central hospitals, Mpilo and Harare, and build two modern hospitals there, one at each.
“We need to build hospitals whose structures are modern, with wider corridors, enough ventilation and so on. Mpilo and Harare were built a long time ago and the structures are now old and outdated. The pipes are leaking and most of the facilities there are old and need to be replaced with new ones,” he said.
“For Mpilo and Harare the agreement already is that there is a need for new structures. We may not build the new hospitals now but those are our plans.”
Earlier this year, Dr Parirenyatwa also hinted that there were plans by Government to build four more district hospitals, two in Bulawayo and two in Harare as part of efforts to reduce the load on available health institutions.
He said the available infrastructure had been outgrown by the local population which has since grown to 13 million.
The health minister also talked about the urgent need to decongest the country’s referral hospitals by decentralising, to clinics, services offered by hospitals.
He said decentralisation of services would see local clinics offering x-ray services, caesarean operations and blood tests, among other services that are only being accessed at referral hospitals.
Dr Parirenyatwa said increasing the scope of local clinics would also help bring the services closer to people.
“We have also spoken about decongesting our referral hospitals by decentralising services to local clinics. This is something that we are taking seriously and would want implemented as this will help reduce pressure at our hospitals.
“By decentralising services we will also be bringing the services closer to the people which will translate into a more efficient health delivery system. If you look at it most of these clinics are being underutilised and if we increase their capacity this will help ease the burden on the big Government hospitals,” he said.
Dr Parirenyatwa also revealed that local hospitals were set to benefit from a $100 million grant from China, which would go towards buying equipment.
He said some hospitals such as Mpilo and Harare central hospitals had already started benefiting from the grant. “It’s not all gloom and doom for our health institutions. There is potential for growth. There is a $100 million loan scheme which will see all our major hospitals being able to buy critical equipment. I’m told that Mpilo and Harare have already started buying equipment using the scheme,” he said.
Dr Parirenyatwa also expressed dissatisfaction at the critical shortage of specialist medical personnel in Bulawayo, urging political leaders in the province to come up with ways of attracting specialists.
“I’m disappointed that there are no specialists in Bulawayo and the whole of Matabeleland region. I would want to pose a challenge to the Minister of State for Provincial Affairs in Bulawayo to be innovative and come up with strategies of attracting specialists to the province.
“There is a need to strengthen learning institutions in the region like Nust to ensure that it produces graduates that meet local needs. These graduates must be caught when they are still young and local leadership should come up with ways to make them stay,” he said.
The health minister recently toured Mpilo Central Hospital where he expressed satisfaction at the progress made by leadership at the health institution to improve standards.
He, however, said there was more work that needed to be done for the hospital’s standards to be restored.
“If you look at where Mpilo is coming from, you will recognise that there has been some improvement. I’m generally impressed with the work that has been done here. There is still a lot that needs to be done though and I urge the corporate world, members of the community and other stakeholders to support Mpilo’s initiatives,” he said.
The hospital recently held a donors conference, aimed at raising money to upgrade standards at the health institution.
Mpilo hospital’s finances are in the red, with the health institution owed about $16 million, while it owes its creditors about $2 million.
The country heavily relies on Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, Harare Central Hospital, United Bulawayo Hospitals and Mpilo for specialist services, a situation that has seen the health facilities being overwhelmed.
Local hospitals are also facing a serious shortage of critical medical staff.
According to a 2013 report on the state of human resources in Government hospitals by a local consulting group, Proserve, major referral hospitals were operating with seven specialist doctors out of a required 26 and one pathologist instead of six is available for the whole country.