Mangwande Rural Clinic in Lower Gweru is operating without clean water with the health centre relying on water fetched from a nearby dam, it has been established.
BY Stephen Chadenga
The water crisis has also affected Mangwande Primary School, a few metres away. The two institutions usually rely on pumped water from nearby tanks, but villagers said pumping is frequently affected by lack of diesel and at times breakdowns.
When NewsDay visited the health institution yesterday, villagers were taking turns to fetch raw water from the dam and carting it to the clinic for drinking and washing purposes.
Villagers said the health crisis had gone for close to a week now.
“Villagers take turns to deliver water fetched from the dam to the clinic,” said Baloyi Mpofu.
“We are doing this out of humanitarian effort and as concerned villagers since there are no other alternatives.”
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He said they delivered the water in big containers to the clinic to be used by patients.
Women who had delivered babies told this paper that the situation was so bad that they had begged nurses at the clinic to discharge them.
“I delivered my baby on Saturday and was told that I could only be discharged after three days, this was after I begged to be discharged home because of the water situation,”one woman who requested anonymity said.
Gweru district medical officer, Shakespeare Mureyani said his office had not received reports from the clinic about the situation.
“This is news to me, my office has not been alerted about such a situation,” Mureyani said.
Mureyani even phoned the district nursing officer in the presence of this reporter and she also professed ignorance on the matter.
At Mangwande Primary School, each student is being asked to bring at least two litres of water from home as the taps at the school had also dried up.
Midlands provincial education director, Agnes Gudo was not available for comment yesterday.
