Call to build more clinics in B/bridge

Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau
The western part of Beitbridge District urgently needs more clinics to ease the plight of sick people who have to walk up to 15km to get medical attention, almost twice the maximum distance recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

According to WHO standards, people should not walk for more than 8km to access primary healthcare facilities.

There are eight wards under Beitbridge West each with more than 10 000 people relying on one clinic save for Ward 14, which is awaiting the opening of its first clinic.

The situation has been worsened by the fact that infrastructure at some of the clinics was damaged by storms or stolen.

Currently, members of the Shashe community are being forced to travel 115km to Beitbridge town or 60km to Swereki to access health services and vaccinations for infants after the solar system and some sections of the roof at Shashi Clinic were damaged by a storm in November last year and are yet to be repaired.

Beitbridge West Member of Parliament Cde Ruth Maboyi has urged the Government and its partners to mobilise resources to build more clinics. According to Cde Maboyi, ideally each ward should have at least two primary healthcare facilities to improve health services in the constituency.

In an interview yesterday, she said though some communities were moulding bricks or pooling resources to construct clinics, Government and others should complement them.

“I have already engaged the Minister of Health and Child Care (Dr Obadiah Moyo) over the state of health in our area after visiting Majini and Tshamnangana clinics,” said Cde Maboyi.

“Besides not having adequate clinics, some of the institutions are understocked. We need to put heads together and address our challenges. In areas around Whunga, people are struggling to access primary healthcare facilities.

“We are also looking forward to the opening of Mazunga Clinic to cater for people in resettlement areas around Ward 14”.

In some places, she said the existing health care centres were being damaged by natural disasters and repairs were taking too long.

So far, three clinics in the area had solar panels .