The Sunday News
Robin Muchetu, Senior reporter
MPILO Central Hospital in Bulawayo is inadequately prepared to handle coronavirus cases.
This emerged when the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health and Child Care visited the hospital on Thursday to access preparedness of Bulawayo health institutions in the wake of an outbreak.
The committee led by the chairperson Dr Ruth Labode was particularly unimpressed by the state of affairs at Mpilo Central Hospital where patients were being bundled in one room as they arrived the at the hospital.
“If a patient comes here, they have a high temperature and they are saying they were in China and they have been in a queue all day with other patients, what will you do? You yourself (workers) do not have any protective clothing or masks. It does not work. You are not ready here,” she said while talking to nurses attending to patients at the casualty department.
Dr Labode said this much to the chagrin of the Mpilo officials who said they were not an isolation hospital so they were not going to treat any suspected cases of the Coronavirus who came to the hospital.
She said besides the hospital not being an isolation center, they needed to be prepared as people come to the center first before being referred to Thorngrove Infections Disease Hospital.
Dr Labode was furious when the nurses said they would place the victims suspected of having symptoms of the virus in a separate room while they wait for an ambulance to pick them up to Thorngrove Infectious Diseases Hospital.
“…But this patient would have spent so much time in casualty and you further detain them just next to other patients, can you not see that this does not work, you can infect more people if this person tests positive for corona virus,” she said before walking away from the department.
Earlier on there were concerns by the committee who said they were not sanitized as they came it.
“I am worried for myself and others, we came in here and there was no one sanitizing us at the entrance, a whole hospital is ignoring this important issue while the rest of the world is talking about this virus. There must be something that is done here at Mpilo Hospital to ensure the safety of the people,” said Hon Stars Mathe from Nkayi South who sits in the committee.
During the same visit, the committee questioned why renal patients were paying for consumables that are supposed to be covered by the hospital when the Government announced that renal services are free for the public.
Renal patients who are undergoing dialysis are forking out at least US$100 to US$150 to buy consumables elsewhere that enable them to be dialyzed while the institution is said to have received a budget for the consumables.
“You say the service is free but at the same time the specialists are saying patients are failing to raise funds for dialysis consumables while you also report that you have a budget that was allocated foe renal cases. We need to stop lying to each other, if someone is to be arrested let it be so. What is the allocation for the consumables doing and you say the money is almost finished? What is it buying,” Dr Labode questioned?
The committee also heard from the hospital chief executive officer Mr Leonard Mabhandi that that there was a high staff attrition as nurses were leaving en mass while doctors and specialists were also leaving the institution.
