The Sunday News
Dumisani Sibanda Sunday News Correspondent
GOVERNMENT is working on improving polyclinics throughout the country to have doctors, laboratories and X-Ray machines to de-congest central hospitals like Mpilo Hospital in Bulawayo which are overwhelmed by the number of patients seeking medical treatment. Health and Child Care Minister, Dr David Parirenyatwa, said this in an interview by telephone yesterday following his visit on Friday at the health institution in Bulawayo which is the major referral hospital in the Southern region servicing Bulawayo, Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, Masvingo and Midlands provinces.
“Mpilo is one of our best referral hospitals which is the nerve centre supporting the Southern Region,” he said.
“It deserves far more specialists and nurses. We also need to strengthen institutions like the Mpopoma Polyclinic in Bulawayo so that they can have a doctor stationed at the clinic, a laboratory, X-ray machines for small things like a broken arm and they don’t have to refer some of the smaller cases to Mpilo Hospital.”
Dr Parirenyatwa said the programme has already started in Mabvuku and will move to rural areas and throughout the country.
“For instance, in the rural areas we want to strengthen Ntabazinduna Polyclinic (in Umguza about 25km from Bulawayo),” he said.
On Friday, Dr David Parirenyatwa came face to face with the crisis which the industrial action by junior doctors has created as he was told that a doctor in Bulawayo’s Mpilo Hospital’s Casualty Department was attending to about 80 patients every morning.
Dr Parirenyatwa who was accompanied by officials from his ministry including the chairman of the Health Services Board, Dr Lovemore Mumbengeranwa, toured some sections of the hospital.
At the casualty department, where a doctor was attending to a 15-month-old boy who had sprained his right hand, the Minister enquired how he was coping and was told that the medical practitioner was attending to between “80 and 100 patients each morning”.
However, Dr Parirenyatwa refused to comment on the issue of junior doctors refusing to sign new contracts saying the issue was being handled by the Health Services Board.
The junior doctors’ industrial action was sparked by the new contracts that the Health Services Board has come up with for these medical practitioners.
In terms of the new contracts, junior doctors will now get a total salary package of $895 per month, including allowances, but the doctors have vowed not to take it arguing that it violates their rights as workers.
The doctors are demanding, among other issues, clarity in their contracts relating to matters like repeating college classes and the period a lady doctor should be on maternity leave.
