Zimbabwe Speaker of Parliament exposes rot at central hospitals- says relative’s son was only operated after he intervened

Secondly, the X-ray machine and the Scan, most of the time the machines are said to be out of order. So, if ever anyone is lucky at that time to be attended to, when they get to the other end where the doctor is looking at the X-ray picture, the patient is told the X-ray is not clear because the X-ray machine is faulty.  So they are referred to facilities outside or private operators where they have to do another X-ray.

On the scanning machine, pregnant mothers who have to do a scan are told that there is no jelly but surprisingly, again, the officer operating the scan will be having their private jelly. So they only attend to their private patients from their private practice but who come and use the hospital scan with the jelly.  Anyone referred by Mpilo is told that there is no jelly, yet those coming from outside who will be their private patients will be attended to.

The same applies to medicines, when the doctor has written a prescription and they are supposed to be given medicine from the hospital dispensary, they are told there is nothing yet it is not true.  When the patients are asked to pay directly to nurses in the ward, surprising the medicines are made available. 

So, these are some of the examples that are happening at Mpilo Hospital.  Therefore, I would request that the Ministry of Health and Child Care carries out an investigation and bring a Ministerial Statement to this House.   I thank you.

THE HON. SPEAKER: You have raised such a fundamental and profound observation which I feel should have been raised yesterday when the Hon. Minister of Health was here. I concur with you because I had a relative son admitted at Parirenyatwa with a broken arm. He could not be operated upon for six months until I was informed and immediately called the hospital, only then was the young men operated upon.  So it is a real situation and I feel very sorry that you could not have raised this yesterday…

HON. JAMES SITHOLE: I did not get the chance yesterday.

HE HON. SPEAKER: Next time, you speak to your Chief Whip and make sure that you are on the list to raise such very fundamental and profound issues that have to do with our health delivery.  We will proceed to engage the Hon. Vice President and Minister of Health and Child Care to make a statement on the issue of health delivery in terms of delayed operations at central hospitals. I thank you.

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