Mpilo crumbles

MPILO Central Hospital, which serves all of Bulawayo and has patients referred to it from Matabeleland North and South, the Midlands, Masvingo and beyond, has one thermometer in the paediatric ward.

MPILO Central Hospital, which serves all of Bulawayo and has patients referred to it from Matabeleland North and South, the Midlands, Masvingo and beyond, has one thermometer in the paediatric ward.

Patients at the hospital are told on admission to provide their own syringes, sterilised needles, razors, bandages, drip components and other medical requirements, which have in the past been provided by medical facilities across the country.

Sometimes patients carry water in 20-litre containers, especially to the maternity ward. Pills to induce labour, pain killers and drugs of all sorts have to be provided by patients. Luckily, doctors buy stethoscopes. The outpatient wing at Mpilo is in shambles with all toilets locked and presumably in bad non-working condition.

Corridors are dirty and smelly, lacking any whiff of disinfectant. Mpilo sounds like the typical slaughterhouse. Little wonder someone flies all the way to the Far East for a minor appendix surgical operation.

What boggles the mind is that President Robert Mugabe takes a whole Air Zimbabwe plane to go and pick up his wife Grace from the Orient.

The price of that entire trip could be sufficient to buy thermometers for each and every nurse and intern at Mpilo. Drugs and hospital equipment could be supplied and replaced as and when required using all the money that is gobbled by the retinue of officials that always accompanies the president and his wife on numerous “minor medical” trips.

Now obscene celebrations on February 21 Movement slap us across the face with reportedly up to a million dollars going to be wasted on food, drink and elephant meat.

Hundreds of children sharing the president’s birthday will be shuttled to Victoria Falls to – in their young and innocent age – join in the obscenity of splashing wealth in the face of such national penury and lack of healthcare.

In the meantime, Mpilo continues to operate on “one functioning” theatre. Its infrastructure continues to deteriorate with structures starting to look more and more like they were hit by World War II missiles.

Patients get to the hospital and experience instant depression; the trauma traps them in instant demise.

While the word mpilo denotes life, the hospital is now synonymous with death. No wonder one clear vision for the hospital in its recovery plan is to build a bigger mortuary instead of maintaining a small one and going a gear higher in saving life.