THE government is forging ahead with its drive to construct and upgrade health facilities with St Peter’s Mission Hospital in Chipinge being the latest to get a facelift.
The construction of a male ward at the hospital in Checheche has come as a huge relief to the local community where male and female patients were sharing the same ward.
The facility was officially opened by Vice President General (Rtd) Dr Constantino Chiwenga this Thursday.
“We are happy with the construction of a male here. The ward has enabled privacy at the hospital since we were sharing a ward with male patients.”
“This development excites us as we are free to visit our patients with restricts based on gender.”
“We are happy that the VP who is the minister of health has come to officially open our male ward which will go a long way in assisting the community. This hospital caters for 16 referral clinics,” noted Checheche residents who spoke to ZBC News.
In his brief to the Vice President, Chipinge South legislator, Honourable Enock Porisingazi revealed that the ward was constructed using Constituency Development Funds.
“After seeing the problem of male and female wards at St Peter Hospital at Checheche, I took my the constituency development fund for two years to construct this facility. I used ZW$21 million to build the male ward,” he said.
Vice President Chiwenga, who is also the Minister of Health and Child Care, revealed plans to upgrade and further support St Peters Hospital which is now catering for a huge population.
“Initially this institution was constructed as a clinic but the population in Chipinge South has grown. The institution is recording 300 live births every month, but the infrastructure has to be upgraded,” noted the Vice President.
“We have taken a deliberate policy to assist all health institutions including council and missionary institutions,” he went on.
“The missionary institutions assisted us during the liberation struggle so it is our turn now to help and assist them in the areas of need. They have already talked about their X-ray which is outdated and they need solar to back up and we are going to look into it,” he also said.
There are also plans to ensure most health facilities around the country offer specialised services.
“As a government, we are going to build hospitals that include twenty-bed and sixty-bed hospitals depending on the size of the population,” stated the Vice President.
“Now I see that here we need a 60-bed hospital which has more than three theatres because of the demand. This is how we are operating and we have already opened a 20-bed hospital in Harare South with two theatres.”
“Where the population is bigger, we build a 60-bed hospital and put more facilities to curb unnecessary transfers to provincial hospitals and district hospitals. These are the measures we will take not to flood one centre with too many patients,” he reiterated.
The government has made a commitment to fully furnish the hospital ward and install a back-up solar system at the institution.
Source: zbcnews
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