Online Reporter
The National University of Science and Technology (Nust) has made significant progress in operationalising the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Ekusileni Hospital as a specialist teaching and research facility in fulfilment of the late Vice-President Dr Joshua Maqabuko Nkomo’s dream.
The late Dr Nkomo must be smiling in his grave given that a lot of work has been done by the university which says its vision is to transform the 200-bed hospital into a quinary level centre of excellence offering advanced medical services, fostering research and promoting medical tourism.
Nust, on Friday, announced that it recently acquired state-of-the-art medical equipment from China for the first phase of transforming the hospital.
The first group of School of Medicine students at Nust started classes at the hospital in 2023.
The 60 students are studying for a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery under the university’s Faculty of Medicine.
The National Social Security Authority (Nssa) in February this year, handed over the hospital to Nust on a long-term lease.
Dr Nkomo who was not happy with the fact that many Zimbabweans were seeking specialist medical care outside the country, pushed for the construction of this specialist hospital.
The US$4 million hospital whose construction was funded by Nssa, was unfortunately a white elephant for 17 years until its opening in 2021 as a Covid-19 health facility. The state-of-the-art medical facility whose construction was completed in 2001, operated for just seven months before it was closed in 2004 after it was discovered that the acquired medical equipment worth millions of dollars, was obsolete. Nust has since addressed this challenge by acquiring state-of-the-art medical equipment from China.
The students attending classes at the hospital are the first to be enrolled after the Nust Faculty of Medicine was granted medical school status in 2022.
The Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Ekusileni Hospital is meant to serve not only Zimbabwe but the entire Southern African region. When the hospital operates at full throttle providing specialist medical care, the number of Zimbabweans seeking such services outside the country will be drastically reduced.
Many Zimbabweans are seeking specialist treatment in countries such as South Africa, Namibia, India, United Kingdom, US and Russia but most of the specialist doctors working in those countries are Zimbabweans.
This is a confirmation that Zimbabwe has the required expertise and we therefore want to commend Nssa for providing the required infrastructure through this Hospital.
We want at this juncture to commend Government for availing resources to Nust to enable it to transform the hospital into a specialist training and research school.
