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Parirenyatwa
hospital suspends admissions
Radio
VOP
October 24, 2008
http://www.radiovop.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4201&Itemid=755
Parirenyatwa
Hospital, one of the largest referral hospitals in Harare has stopped
hospital admissions with immediate effect due to a chronic shortage
of staff, drugs and food.
"As much as we
would love to admit patients we do not have the drugs and food to
give these patients and so we are turning them away,' a nurse told
Radio VOP.
As the economic
situation continue to deteriorate, qualified doctors, nurses and
other support staff continue to desert the health sector in droves
for the United Kingdom, South Africa and Botswana.
In a sad turn of events this week the hospital was turning away
seriously ill patients as there was nobody to attend them and neither
were the drugs and food to give them available.
Some dejected people ferrying ailing relatives could be seen leaving
the hospital after being told that the medical institution had stopped
admissions.
The western entrance to the hospital, called the Casualty Department,
is symbolic of the collapse of this once proud institution, formerly
named Andrew Fleming Hospital when it was built to serve the white
Rhodesian community under Ian Smith's regime. (In 1965 Smith, the
white minority leader of then Rhodesia, declared unilateral independence
from Britain).
The hospital reception is a theatre of agony: adults weep, the injured
groan
and women who have just lost loved ones wail as new arrivals line
up only to be told that they hospital have stopped admissions.
The economic
meltdown has seriously affected the operations of the hospital.
In February the medical institutition stopped all surgical operations
after it ran out of theatre supplies.
The Zimbabwe Association
of Doctors for Human Rights (ZAHDR) expressed outrage at the
worsening situation in government hospitals. Douglas Gwatidzo, ZAHDR
chairman, said he feared many lives would be lost if government
did not intervene urgently
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