@ Province will have 10 plus covid-19 centres - another Wilkins gimmick , overwhelmed long before flood N Garikai

Government of Zimbabwe continues to establish isolation centres to house COVID-19 patients across the country. So far government has named 10 and 23 such isolation centres in Masvingo and Manicaland Provinces.

Here we go again, this is just another blunder by this incompetent Zanu PF government. There are many questions for which there are no answers – proof this is just another ill-advised move.  

How are the ordinary people to know whether the patient has covid-19 and not some other disease? What is almost certain to happen here is people will take the sick to the nearest hospital and clinic including those that are not listed as covid-19 centres. The covid-19 patient will queue for hours together with other patients until they are finally attended to; by then they would have infected a few others.

Are the health workers at the hospitals and clinics, not designated covid-19  centres, have the covid-19 test kits and PPE to deal with covid-19 patients?

How many fully kitted ICU for covid-19 patients are available at each of these covid-19 hospitals and clinics? The last thing people want is to track 40 km or more to the hospital or clinic only to be told they are not admitting any more patients!

It is no secret that Zimbabwe’s health care service has all but collapsed after 40 years of neglect.

Even the country’s referral hospitals like Parerenyatwa and Mpilo Hospitals are in a very advance state of rot and decay with poorly paid doctors and nurses, no equipment, no medicine, etc. Parerenyatwa Hospital has often cancel even routine operations because the hospital did not have something as basic as painkillers. Indeed, the hospital has gone for days without running water!

If the country’s referral hospitals are in a sorry state, the provincial and district hospitals are in much, much worse state. Most of the covid-19 designated hospitals and clinic will still have no clean running water and whatever allocation of medicine, PPE, etc. they have allocated for the purpose will run out after the first 100 patient-days. At the peak of the pandemic these hospitals and clinics will sending away 100s of very sick covid-19 patients every day!

What is annoying here is that Zimbabwe’s health care service is in this sorry state not because the country is poor. God no! The money that should have been invested in our health care services was cream off to build sprawling palatial mansions such as the Mugabe’s Blue Roof, to prop up the chefs’ corrupt and wasteful business empires, to bankroll the chefs’ lavish lifestyles, etc.

The chefs did not mind that the country’s health care services was in a sorry state because they did not use it. In 2012 alone Mugabe made 8 trips to Singapore for an eye check-up each trip costed US$3 million, according to Tendai Biti who was the Minister of Finance at the time and paid the bills.

With US$ 24 million, the country could have built, equip and staff a five-star eye centre that would still be there to this day!  

President Mnangagwa boasted of Zimbabwe’s “preparedness” to deal with corona virus and names Wilkins Hospital as the country’s first covid-19 designated hospital. The nation was shocked that the hospital only had a bed and a bucket toilet to offer Zororo Makamba, its first covid-19 patient! The hospital did not even have running water!  

Zimbabwe is not prepared to deal with the covid-19 pandemic, that is a fact. The government has announce 23 or so designated covid-19 centres in each of the country’s 8 rural provinces; this is just a gimmick these centres will be completely overwhelmed after receiving the first 10 patients or so, long before the flood of 100s of patients per day!

There are a lot of useful things government should be doing to mitigate the spread of covid-19 such as equipping and deploying health care workers who will visit the sick in their homes and decide who is a covid-19 suspend, what help they need and where to get it. It is utterly pointless giving the people false hope that they will get covid-19 hospital attention when there will be no such help.

The corona virus has brought into sharp focus Zimbabwe’s need for a competent government. This corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging Zanu PF regime’s blunders and gimmicks have the nation running around like headless chickens making the covid-19 pandemic worse and worse.

The question to be asked is; what will it take, in lost treasure, human suffering and deaths, to finally force Zimbabweans to open their eyes to the need for good governance?