SILOBELA -- Nurses at Silobela District Hospital in Midlands province are having to live in patients wards because of an acute shortage of staff housing, Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe Acting district medical officer Julius Mahachi told Khupe that the hospital has seen a mass exodus of staff who opted to leave because they could not be accommodated at the hospital that is the second largest referral centre in the district after Kwekwe General Hospital.
Mahachi told Khupe, who visited the hospital together with Health and Child Welfare Minister Henry Madzorera, that the hospital is supposed to have a staff compliment of 128 but only employs 25 people.
The staff houses were supposed to be constructed under phase three of the institutions construction but work was suspended after phase two, Mahachi said. ? This has resulted in the hospital operating with very limited staff houses, forcing nurses to share accommodation with mothers in the maternity wing.
Mahachi said unless the problems of accommodation and communication were addressed, qualified professionals would continue to shun areas such as Silobela.
Zimbabwes health system was once one of the best in Africa but collapsed as a severe recession over the past decade meant the government was unable to build new hospitals or maintain existing ones, while poor salaries drove the best trained doctors and nurses abroad where pay and working conditions are better.
Zimbabwes power-sharing government of President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara has promised to rebuild the economy and restore basic services such as water supplies, health and education.
But the administration has found it hard to undertake any meaningful reconstruction work after failing to get financial support from rich Western nations that insist they want to see more political reforms before they can loosen the purse strings.
Post published in: Politics