Chronicle Editor
Sukulwenkosi Dube-Matutu, Gwanda Correspondent
MATABELELAND South province is facing a serious shortage of ambulances and this has seen each district operating with just one vehicle.
The Provincial Medical Director, Dr Rudo Chikodzore said each district requires at least three ambulances to adequately service its area.
She said apart from ambulances to service the districts, the province needs ambulances dedicated to Covid-19.
Dr Chikodzore said 14 of the province’s ambulances were down hence the serious shortage.
“The province is very big and the shortage of ambulances is affecting our referral system.
“It is also impossible to attend to two emergency cases at one time in a district as a result of ambulance shortage,” she said.
Dr Chikodzore said in the event of an ambulance attending to a Covid-19 patient, it has to go through a disinfection process before it’s used again.
She said there was therefore a need to dedicate some ambulances for Covid-19 so that the normal services were not interrupted by Covid-19 distress calls.
Dr Chikodzore said there was an urgent need to repair the ambulances that are down so that the province can operate with at least 20 ambulances or more.
She said in some districts, some clinics were about 100km from the district hospitals and patients from these clinics at times needed ambulances to ferry them to the district hospitals. — @DubeMatutu
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