HUMAN rights doctors have threatened to approach the courts
to seek urgent enforcement of a High Court order forcing government to provide
personal protective equipment (PPE) for health personnel at the forefront of
fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
Last week, the High Court ordered government to provide
PPEs for frontline healthcare workers across the country to help prevent
possible contraction while attending to patients.
This was after the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for
Human Rights (ZADHR), represented by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights,
filed an application demanding that government provides equipment to frontline
healthcare workers.
But in a tweet yesterday, ZADHR said COVID-19 case number
27 had showed “why government must urgently implement the High Court ruling on
the provision of PPE to health workers”.
“ZADHR will soon approach the courts to seek urgent
enforcement of the High Court order,” the human rights doctors said.
Case number 27 is that of 82-year-old Gogo Nguni from
Mhondoro, who succumbed to the virulent disease on Wednesday.
On April 16, she is said to have developed “a flu-like
illness with chest symptoms”, received medical treatment and her condition
improved.
Three days later, her condition deteriorated. She was taken
to West End Clinic on Monday and was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Tuesday before
her passing on in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
In a COVID-19 update on Wednesday, the Health ministry said
Gogo Nguni had “no history of recent travel or any known contact with a
COVID-19 case”.
Questions have been raised over why she was taken to a
private clinic when infectious diseases hospitals had already been set aside
for people with COVID-19-like symptoms.
The human rights doctors said “special treatment of
politically connected patients must not violate screening and infection control
measures in hospitals and ports of entry.”
They said the continued exposure of healthcare workers to
COVID-19 due to absence of PPE was in violation of the law, adding “health
workers must be protected”.
“ZADHR calls upon all health institutions (private and
public) to urgently institute measures that protect health workers from
COVID-19,” the doctors said. Newsday
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