Chronicle Editor
Thandeka Moyo-Ndlovu, Senior Health Reporter
THE Ministry of Health and Child Care has oriented inspectors tasked with holding the Ministry and all its workers to account in providing quality healthcare services.
Part of the inspectorate’s mandate will be to ensure patients’ safety, enhance quality assurance and conduct procurement audits for medical equipment and consumables as well as investigative audits for fraud, wastage and mismanagement cases.
This is part of efforts to weed out negligent healthcare workers that have been blamed for some deaths, complications and risks some patients suffer at public health facilities.
In some instances, members of the public have complained that workers, especially nurses, mistreat them when they are seeking medical attention or deliberately delay serving them when they are in critical conditions.
Mpilo Central Hospital recently redeployed 20 nurses from its maternity ward after recording a surge in neonatal and maternal deaths which residents said was due to negligence by staffers.
The 20 also went for hearings, as the hospital investigated how a Bulawayo couple lost an unborn baby to negligence after the pregnant woman spent more than 48 hours without medical attention.
A new-born baby also died at Mpilo after falling into a toilet bowl.
This was after nurses allegedly left the mother, who is mentally challenged, to give birth unattended.
The horrific incident happened after the 21-year-old woman from Nkulumane 12, who was denied attentive care as a result of her mental disability, went into labour and decided to use the toilet where her baby was later trapped in the bowl.
According to the Ministry, the inspectorate division is part of the restructuring programme whose implementation paves way for the rolling out of a sustainable funding model, far greater effectiveness and a new work ethic for staff in line with Vision 2030.
Speaking on Friday after a week-long orientation programme held in Victoria Falls, Deputy Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr John Mangwiro, said the inspectors were ready to self-introspect for better service delivery.
“As a ministry we have standard operating procedures and guidelines, which we need to constantly use to check if we are meeting set parameters and targets we set for ourselves as a ministry,” he said.
“This team will help us follow up on patient care, inspect if patients are being attended to on time, why there are drug shortages in all our health facilities and investigate what causes deaths so that we have a quality delivery system.
“As we work towards the upper middle-income economy by 2030, we have set standards for ourselves, which the inspectors will help assess so that we continue to improve every day.”
Dr Mangwiro said inspections were already underway countrywide, adding that all health care workers will be assessed on how they serve members of the public.
“This training was done in partnership with the army as we decided to save forex and not take our inspectors outside Zimbabwe for the training.
We have collaborated with some Government departments and hope that once inspectors work on ensuring our institutions are clean, the cleanliness will spread to industry and home. We want our environment to be clean so that we have a happier and healthier nation,” he said.
Restructuring of the health portfolio is in three stages, which include adding a new top layer to the national health delivery system, developing an organised strategic department, adopting a sustainable funding model for the national healthcare system and developing conditions of services for the health staff to drive the new Ministry of Health and Child Care structure.
Traditionally, Zimbabwe’s national healthcare system had four levels: primary health centres, district and mission hospitals, provincial hospitals, and central or teaching hospitals. – @thamamoe
Sidumisile Mabena