The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Reporter
CLOSE to year after the Government declared that Ekusileni Hospital will be re-opening as a national Covid-19 isolation centre, there is still no clear time frame when the institution will eventually open.
The hospital, however, has already employed a staff complement of 55 inclusive of five doctors who are on the Government payroll. The hospital, a brainchild of late Vice-President Dr Joshua Nkomo, has experienced a number of false starts and numerous efforts to re-open the institution whose building is owned by the National Social Security Company (Nssa) have failed.
The hospital was opened in 2001 and closed in 2004 because it had outdated equipment. Last year in April, there was hope that the institution would be re-opened after the Government identified the centre as one of the institutions that was earmarked to house cases of the coronavirus (Covid-19) in the city.
The Government tasked non-state players- under the banner of IAM4BYO-Fighting Covid-19 initiative- with the role of leading the gathering of resources to open the institution. However, close to a year later nothing tangible seems to be in place with authorities failing to commit on an actual day that the institution will take its first patient.
The Government last year seconded nurses to the hospital to help spearhead the prospects of reopening but a visit to the hospital revealed that the nursing compliment report daily to work just to spend the entire day sitting at the facility.
According to the government the hospital will become a National University of Science and Technology (NUST) specialist teaching centre when the coronavirus curve flattens.
Ekusileni Hospital acting chief executive officer Dr Absalom Dube said plans were underway to see the eventual reopening of the hospital by end of this month albeit with an initial 15 bed capacity. Speaking during a discussion on state of health institutions in Bulawayo last week, Dr Dube said their main challenge was getting the necessary funding to turn the hospital into a Covid-19 centre but noted that most of the pending works were over 80 percent complete.
“Most of the pending infrastructure works are now beyond 80 percent of completion and we have been given a timeline of about two weeks. There is however just a few key equipment which we are in process of procuring and with the infrastructure work being projected to have been completed, if we have two beds, we will work with those beds but what I can say is that before the end of this month we will see this hospital being finally commissioned and starting to take Covid-19 cases.
“Initially we had wanted to open the full capacity of 200 beds, which we later reduced to 50 but we are now going further down to as little as 20 beds with five intensive care unit beds and 15 general beds capacity. This is not to downgrade the capacity of the hospital but if we are to start operating, we have to start small and increase capacity on a sliding scale,” said Dr Dube.
He said in terms of staffing they had a staff compliment of 55, with five doctors, which he said was enough to cater for the initial 15-bed capacity.
“For now, the hospital has a fully functioning piping system with a capacity of just over 160 beds. Fortunately, IAM4Byo also managed to source an Oxygen tank which was installed in August last year and it has been tested and is ready to be operated. All the stakeholders are in agreement this hospital has been a baby that has been pampered for a long time and its high time that it comes onboard and helps relieve other hospitals in the city,” said Dr Dube.
The opening of Ekusileni will be a boost to the city’s fight to contain the pandemic and will be the third public institution in the city to admit Covid-19 patients.The other two are Thorngrove Infectious Disease Hospital and United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH)’s Old Bartley Memorial Block (BMB) which opened at the end of last year.
