By Nomusa Garikai- Stanbic Bank has donated equipment worth US$37 000 to Sally Mugabe Central Hospital’s maternity wing and will be spending $2 million refurbishments. The list of equipment and the refitting was impressive.
The equipment includes an anesthesia machine, suction pumps, conventional laryngoscope set, infant weighing scale, fluid warmer, IV pole, a surgical table, electro surgical unit, an infant warmer, defibrillator, eco-patient monitors, infusion pump and a patient monitor rolling stand.
The refurbishment included fitting of two sets of double action doors, painting of walls, replacing formica tops to wall edge protection, supplying and fitting cupboards and shelves.
“Stanbic Bank purchased the theatre equipment, refurbished the entrance hall; internal passage; boots room, sluce room; maternity theatre, scrub room, sister-in-charge’s office and outside passage,” Stanbic Bank chief executive Solomon Nyanhongo explained.
One can only imagine the sorry state of the Hospital wing before this generous donation!
This is a complete re-equip and overhaul as a result of decades of neglect and being starved of funds. Money that should have been spent on the upkeep of the hospital was siphoned off and spent on such luxuries as Mugabe’s four storey US$ 2 billion Blue Roof palatial mansion.
Mugabe and the ruling elite could afford to neglect local hospitals, they started using overseas hospitals for all their health care needs soon after independence. It costed the nation a pretty penny.
In 2012 Mugabe made no fewer than 8 health care trips to the Far East each trip costing US$ 3 million. When his daughter, Bona, had her baby she too went to the Far East. She and her husband and their entourage went three weeks before the birth. Grace Mugabe and her entourage followed a week or so latter. Mugabe then commandeered an Air Zimbabwe plane to go and see his grandson collect the family. The total bill for this one junket was US$ 15 million, at least.
If the Sally Mugabe Central Hospital’s maternity wing, one of the country’s referral hospitals, was allowed to fall into this sorry state of rot and decay; one can only imagine the rot and decay in the provincial hospitals, even worse state for the hospitals in rural backwater!
The truth is Zimbabwe’s public health care service, like education and other basic services, collapsed a long time ago. No doubt Sally Mugabe maternity wing has continued to admit patients all along and the poorly paid skeleton staff have done the best they could with the ramshackle equip and facilities they had.
Of course, many mothers and babies have lost their lives unnecessarily because the appalling poor quality of the health care provided.
Whatever health care improvements the generous Stanbic Bank has brought to Sally Mugabe maternity wing, they will not last long. The hospital is so starved of funding the very expensive equipment will laying idle for lack of proper service or US$ 10 spare part. As long as nothing is done to end the rampant corruption and gross mismanagement, the root causes of the country’s economic meltdown; there will be no money to fund even basic services like health care and education.
As long as Zimbabwe remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and murderous thugs there will be no meaningful economic recovery. As soon as the last dollar of the Stanbic Bank donation is spent, Sally Mugabe Maternity Hospital will start drifting back to its sorry state of rot and decay, the same state of the rest of the other wings at Central Hospital are in!
A country without something as basic as education and health care services is doomed.