IN a shocking turn of events, pregnant women are sleeping on the floor at one of the country’s biggest hospitals, Parirenyatwa’s Mbuya Nehanda Maternity Hospital as the public health facility fails to cope.
A recent visit by NewsDay to the facility exposed use of
floor beds to accommodate pregnant women because the wards were full.
Those that managed to get space were, however, grateful
that they had been admitted.
“I count myself lucky because I got admitted. I cannot
afford private care so this is the only option,” one expecting mother said.
As the COVID-19 pandemic eases and normalcy returns, the
facility has recorded huge numbers of pregnant women, forcing the authorities
to create makeshift beds on the floor.
Responding to queries from NewsDay, Parirenyatwa Group of
Hospitals spokesperson Lenos Dhire admitted that the institution was
overwhelmed by a high number of expecting mothers.
“This has resulted in creation of floor beds to accommodate
all the mothers. In our view, this is a
result of a weak referral system due to malfunctioning of the City of Harare
clinics,” Dhire said.
He said the free user fee policy to some extent was also
contributing to the influx of maternity patients as they avoided council
clinics which charge a fee.
“Some mothers come in as walk-in patients when they are
already in labour. As a government
hospital, we do not turn away any maternity case at Mbuya Nehanda Maternity
Hospital. We ensure that everyone who comes is attended to. Under normal
circumstances, as a referral hospital, we are supposed to attend to complicated
cases while simpler cases are attended to at municipal level,” Dhire said.
He said the ideal nurse-to-patient ratio in the labour ward
is 1:1, but currently they were making
do with the staff that they have.
There is a high turnover of midwives, but the available
staff is working hard to offer an acceptable level of service to the expecting
mothers. As of today, (April 5, 2022), we have 118 expecting mothers against a
capacity of 96. We also have 81 babies,” he said.
Dhire said management at Parirenyatwa had put in place
measures to ensure adequate coverage in the maternity unit by deploying
registered general nurses to support the midwives while they are being trained
on the job.
The situation at Mbuya Nehanda comes at a time when there
have been disturbing reports from South Africa which indicated that some of the
pregnant women who were featured in viral video sleeping on the floor at Rahima
Moosa Mother and Child Hospital in Johannesburg were Zimbabweans.
The pregnant women had been sleeping on the floor for more
than three days.
Zimbabwe’s health sector has been severely hit by poor
funding, lack of infrastructure and health professionals’ brain drain. Newsday
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