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Thandeka Moyo, Health Reporter
ZIMBABWE has only one functional radiotherapy machine in Harare for cancer patients after four other machines broke down last year.
Cancer has become one of the deadliest diseases in Zimbabwe after overtaking others like HIV and Aids and accounts for about a third of deaths in the country.
Radiation therapy, which is also called radiotherapy, is a treatment that uses high doses of radiation to kill cancer cells and shrink tumours.
Those who can afford it have travelled to Harare or neighbouring countries seeking the lifesaving treatment while a majority are at risk of having cancer spread in their bodies until it becomes untreatable.
Cancer patients countrywide now depend on the one machine at Parirenyatwa Hospital which has to cater for at least 70 patients a day.
Four of the available machines are reportedly down and yet to be fixed.
In an interview, Mpilo Central Hospital clinical director Dr Solwayo Ngwenya said two machines at Mpilo were down for the greater part of last year.
He said the cancer unit, which was equipped with state-of-the art machinery when it re-opened in April 2017 after eight years, was facing a number of challenges. “Our greatest challenge is that the radiotherapy machines are always down half the time which means people still have to travel to Harare or elsewhere for that kind of treatment. We only rely on a machine at Parirenyatwa at the moment,” Dr Ngwenya said.
“We do not have monthly statistics for some months because the machine was down and I can only say we treated a total of 643 patients using radiotherapy last year,” he said.
According to Dr Ngwenya, it was difficult to maintain treatment of cancer patients as there was no guarantee that the machines would work all the time. “We are in the process of installing uninterrupted power supply (UPS) batteries as a long term solution to the problem because most of these break downs are due to power cuts,” he said.
About 150 cancer patients accessing radiation services from Mpilo have been affected following the breakdown of machinery at the hospital since November last year. Zimbabwe records an average of 5 000 new cancer cases annually and the most deadly remains cervical which kills four women a day. – @thamamoe.
derick.khumalo