The Sunday News
While the opening of the Ekusileni Medical Centre in Bulawayo is long overdue after the facility has been lying idle for over a decade, efforts by Government, spearheaded by Health Minister Dr David Parirenyatwa, are commendable.
The hospital, a brain child of Father Zimbabwe, the late Vice-President Dr Joshua Nkomo, was meant to provide specialised health care to the people of Bulawayo and surrounding areas, and ease the pressure on major referral hospitals in town, Mpilo and United Bulawayo Hospitals. In addition, the opening of the facility, which the nation awaits with abated breath, with help mark the Vice-President’s legacy.
The Government last year announced that it was taking over the project after the hospital had failed to open since 2004, with the building already losing its lustre and some equipment falling apart because of idleness.
“This development is based on a Cabinet decision which mandated the health ministry to take over Ekusileni Medical Centre and this is because of the delays that have been occurring that have prevented the hospital from opening,” Dr Parirenyatwa was quoted as saying.
The delays, he said, have impacted negatively on the people of the Matabeleland region who should have benefited from the hospital’s services. The health minister said the hospital is going to open not as an ordinary institution, but as a specialist hospital as per its founder, Dr Nkomo’s dream.
“It makes little sense to open a hospital just like the ones around Ekusileni, so it will open as a specialist institution for various ailments that will assist the people of this region greatly just like Dr Nkomo always wanted as he felt the people of Matabeleland had no specialist services that were available to them at an average cost,” he said.
On Friday, the minister toured the facility, raising hopes that he was busy with the project and expectations are high that in the first half of the year, the facility will be operational. Although the minister could not state when the hospital will be opened, he said Cabinet will meet this month to deliberate on the issue, and a committee was on the ground looking for a suitable partner.
“We will be setting targets as we go so that we don’t plan forever. This team (committee) will come up with a plan for the hospital I will present before Cabinet on January 17. This is a national project and we want it to be known as a regional specialist centre of excellence for people from all parts of the world,” he said.
We hope that this time around, the hospital will be opened to the public, bearing in mind that a number of committees were set up at various levels in the past, but all coming to naught.
