Modern hospital equipment and machinery will be procured by the Government to replace old and obsolete items to ensure patients access quality services, Vice President and Health and Child Care Minister Constantino Chiwenga told the National Assembly yesterday.
He said this while responding to backbenchers during yesterday’s Question Time in the National Assembly.
“We have five cancer machines which are working, (but) they are not enough. We have done our shopping list, as we discussed and agreed with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.
“We want to address all of our hospitals in terms of equipment because some of the equipment was dilapidated and some was no longer compatible with the times and we have to standardise all our equipment so that when we transfer a professional from Plumtree to Mutare, they will not have a problem.
“This will be the way we can guarantee our citizens that wherever they go, they will be attended to,” he said.
The discussions on equipment, said VP Chiwenga, had come up during engagements with Treasury yesterday where the list of equipment the Health Ministry needed to buy had been handed over.
Government has already started addressing shortages of equipment in public hospitals.
Recently, ambulances were distributed to district hospitals so that they do not have transport challenges to attend to the sick and moving emergency cases to referral hospitals.
Thirty clinics are also being constructed around the country in partnership with a British company, NMS Infrastructure Limited, through a US$200 million loan facility from the United Kingdom government.
The programme is expected to ease congestion at referral hospitals as services on offer will include wards for both men and women, paediatric, pre-natal and post-natal wards, a delivery room, minor theatre, consultation rooms, environmental room, guidance and counselling rooms, laboratory and isolation wards where patients will be treated under observation, among other facilities.
VP Chiwenga also updated the House on measures being taken to revive the PSMAS’s operations.
PSMAS, the main medical aid society for State employees and Zimbabwe’s largest, is facing financial challenges that have resulted in the closure or downsizing of operations at some pharmacies and clinics run by its subsidiary, Premier Services Medical Investments.
“The issue is under investigation because a lot of things were not going right at PSMAS,” he said.
VP Chiwenga said the Ministry had directed that all its facilities be re-opened and they had restocked the pharmacies.
Government has provided US$1 million bail out for PSMI to ensure it remains operational while a long term solution is being considered. – The Herald
