Shortage of trained medical staff hits Umzingwane District

19 Jul, 2015 - 00:07 0 Views
Shortage of trained medical staff hits Umzingwane District

The Sunday News

UMZINGWANE District in Matabeleland South province has one doctor servicing 15 rural health facilities, meaning it will take about a year for the doctor to visit all the centres adequately.
The legislator for the area, Cde William Dhewa told the Sunday News that the shortage was affecting operations in Umzingwane.

“This situation is not good as the doctor is always pressed for time as he has to visit all centres and attend to all the patients single handedly and time is always limited,” said Cde Dhewa.

Cde Dhewa said the situation was also bad in terms of nursing staff as there were very few trained nurses in the district.

He also said at one point some clinics had one qualified nurse manning a whole institution.
The shortage of trained medical staff was attributed to brain drain which hit the country over the past few years.

It was further said Government’s directive to freeze recruitment of nurses also affected the province.
“We have nurses that are trained but as the Government had frozen recruitment, it was difficult to get the right staff complement that we need for the district so we were just operating with the few that were available,” said Cde Dhewa.

As a means to address this challenge, the MP called on trained personnel who left the country during the economic downturn to return and fill up the available posts.

“If our trained medical personnel return to the country they will assist in improving inadequacies that we see in rural health facilities mostly and the cities at large,” said Cde Dhewa.

Last week a group of doctors from Youth Business Development Association of Zimbabwe carried out an outreach programme in Umzingwane District where they visited health centres that do not usually get visited by doctors.

The aim was to bring the specialists to people who normally seek treatment in Esigodini or Bulawayo.
Over 600 people were seen by the doctors and treated for various ailments.

Cde Dhewa said the biggest challenge in his district was the shortage of health facilities in newly resettled areas.
“There are many people in newly resettled areas and there are no health facilities which means the people have to travel long distances to access medical care which is not what we want; there should be facilities erected in these areas,” he said.

However, the district will soon start the construction of a Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid and Camera (VIAC) centre whereby people are screened for cancer.

VIAC is an effective way to screen cancer of the cervix.
According to the executive director for the youth organisation, Mr Makarichi Makarichi, there has been an increase in HIV cases in these areas.

“We are opening the VIAC centre as we have realised that there is a significant increase in HIV cases in rural communities and this makes women more susceptible to cervical cancer so we want to assist them and they get screened early,” he said.

He said Population Services Zimbabwe would assist them in the setting up of the VIAC centre at Habane Township in Esigodini.

Both Cde Dhewa and Mr Makarichi concurred that there was a need to ensure that people in rural communities have access to rural health facilities near them at all times.

 

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