By Joyce Mukucha
Despite the fact that Parirenyatwa Hospital has been profoundly refurbished, it has become worrisome that all the machines at the radio therapy centre are defunct thereby affecting service delivery.
Speaking during an assessment tour of the maternity wards, radiology, and other sections of the hospital that have been refurbished, Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr Obadiah Moyo said there was poor management at the institution.
He pointed out that there has been gradual loss of services without anything having been done to appropriately rectify the problems and promised to take effective measures with immediate effect to ensure that quality health services are delivered.
“I decided to come at the radiotherapy centre here at Parirenyatwa as an emergency after three machines have gone down and I really wanted to find out exactly the problem for such a scenario. I realise that there is poor planning. In general we can’t have all machines not functioning,” he said.
Minister Moyo said the ministry was in an emergency mood. Foreign currency required for repairing of machines, that is £10 000, has already been paid and assured that foreign engineers were coming to get the machines working in the shortest possible of time. However he indicated that there was no service contract at the hospital which were then leading to such kind of problems.
“I also discovered that there is no service contracts for the maintenance of the machines. You can’t run a service without a service contract. They are very essential so that you are able to rectify problems immediately, bringing the supplier to fix them in time. So a service contract for at least five years need to be put in place by the management here. Anyway, engineers should be here by next week.
“We also need to get new machines here and at the end of the day what is really necessary for us here is to have a joint venture department in the radio and chemotherapy. If we bring in a partner who is capable of bringing in new machines and on top of that being able to repair our machines on a continuous basis, we will go a long way.”
The challenge which was being encountered is that there is no one who has been trained to fix the machines hence the need to use local knowledgeable technicians for their benefit. A partnership, he said, will be locked into an arrangement, a contract where they will train the staff to ensure that the machines will be working on a continuous basis.
He said there was need to make arrangements with the private sectors in Zimbabwe who have radio machines so that they can give us assistance in the meantime. The Consultancy, the clinical director and Chief Executive Officer are soon to be tasked by the minister to make contacts with the other players in the private sector and come up with an arrangement that prevents loss of life.
“The local private players will be very willing to give that assistance in the meantime. This is Zimbabwe and no one should be denied medical treatment from any health facility. Continuous delivery of service is vital so that no patient will go without any treatment needed,” Minister Moyo said.