Terrence Mawawa, Masvingo| The Province’s leading referral centre, Masvingo Provincial Hospital is facing a severe shortage of essential drugs, triggering a high mortality rate at the government run health centre.
The worst affected departments include casualty, chronic illness and children’s wards respectively. Asthmatic patients have not been receiving treatment for the past few months because the nebuliser machine developed a fault and had since not been maintained . Sources at the hospital told ZimEye.com yesterday there was a sharp increase in the mortality rate among infants and patients referred to the casualty section due to the critical shortage of essential medicine.
“The situation here is terrible because we are recording an uncharacteristically high mortality rate especially in the paeds(children’s) wards as a result of drug shortages. The casualty section is also hard hit by the dearth of medicine. We are also struggling to supply drugs for asthmatic patients. Workers here are frustrated by the fact that they are watching helplessly as patients succumb to treatable ailments,”said a senior staff member at the government hospital.
Provincial Medical Director for Masvingo Dr Amadeus Shamu confirmed there was a shortage of drugs at the province’s largest referral centre. “There is a critical shortage of drugs at Masvingo hospital and all our hospitals across the province. I will make further enquiries at the hospital,”said Dr Shamu. The state of government hospitals in the country has endangered the lives of patients.
Many people now opt to take their relatives to private hospitals despite the high admission costs.