Govt probes hospitals

Health Reporter
Government has set up a six-member committee to look into various practices and relationships between public and private health institutions following the death of a patient who was allegedly refused treatment at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals because she was referred by a private institution.

In a recent interview, Health and Child Care Minister Dr David Parirenyatwa said the committee, chaired by Parirenyatwa Group of Hospital’s management board chairperson Dr Godfrey Sikipa, has two weeks to prepare a report on how patients are treated at all institutions and how public and private referral health hospitals relate to each other.

“There is a problem between private institutions such as West End, St Annes, Avenues and public institutions such as Parirenyatwa, Harare and Chitungwiza hospitals in terms of referring patients,” Dr Parirenyatwa said.

He said following the incident involving a patient who died after she was allegedly denied treatment at Parirenyatwa, he summoned all representatives from private and public referral institutions in Harare to get a deeper understanding on what was happening in the sector.

“What we then found out was that it was a case of a patient who collapsed at Walter Magaya’s Prophetic Healing Deliverance church and went to West End Hospital. West End seemingly did what they could and sent that patient for admission at Parirenyatwa.

“It is not confirmed whether that patient was attended to at Parirenyatwa and that is one of the things that need investigation. But the patient came back and actually slept overnight at West End Hospital. He died in the morning at the hospital,” said Dr Parirenyatwa.

He said following a discussion with public and private referral institutions’ chief executives and chairmen, he had set up a six-member committee to look into these and other practices by the same institutions.

“We have given them criteria of what to look at and told them I want a report in two weeks time,” said Dr Parirenyatwa.

Some of the issues the committee will look at are treatment of patients and the ethics behind referring patients to public institutions after they exhaust all their savings.

“A lot of these things have been happening for a long time that we need to put a stop to all this and help each other,” he said.