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MPILO Central Hospital — the biggest referral centre in Matabeleland — yesterday held a donors’ conference to raise money to fund the institution’s operations and put it on a sound financial footing after years of under-funding crippled its ability to deliver adequate health care to thousands of people in the region.
The hospital — one of the oldest in Zimbabwe with an impeccable history of servicing the southern region of the country — is facing a myriad of challenges chief among which is a lack of financial resources to discharge its mandate satisfactorily.

Since the turn of the millennium, Mpilo hospital alongside other major referral centres such as Parirenyatwa, the United Bulawayo Hospitals and Harare Hospital, have seen standards steadily deteriorating due to the economic challenges facing the country.

Key infrastructure such as theatres, wards, mortuaries, incinerators, radiotherapy equipment and boilers is archaic having undergone years of neglect while the buildings themselves are derelict and in dire need of a facelift. Staff morale has been low for years due to poor remuneration and allegations of corruption in the procurement and supply of critical equipment, medical and surgical sundries has not helped matters either.

All these factors have combined to render the institutions ineffective in discharging their duties to the nation. While the health vote has consistently received a favourable allocation in the National Budget, it is terribly inadequate to cover the needs of all hospitals in the country and administrators of these institutions have had to play a juggling game in resource allocation while relying on well-wishers and donors to augment their meagre budgets.

It is a miracle that institutions like Mpilo have survived to date and a testimony to the ingenuity and administrative acumen of the men and women tasked with running them. We thus pay tribute to the nurses, doctors, administrators and all staff members of major hospitals for the sterling role they play in keeping them afloat at a time when Zimbabwe is undergoing major economic tribulations.

Their dedication to duty and selflessness is in tune with their calling and we exhort them to continue providing a critical service to the nation. Yesterday’s donor conference at Mpilo comes as the hospital has undergone a major facelift financed by donors with some companies adopting some wards and financing their rehabilitation.

The casualty ward has been renovated while the 38-bed male ward had its broken tiles replaced with ceramic ones. Electrical cables have also been repaired while bathrooms, sinks, sewage and water reticulation systems were attended to.

To underscore the Bulawayo community’s responsiveness to Mpilo’s needs, an explosion of a component at a transformer linking the hospital and which caused a two-day power outage beginning Tuesday, has been rectified with a donor chipping in to buy the spare part.
Efforts are underway to install the critical component with power expected to be restored this weekend. The camaraderie which exists between the hospital and the community it operates in shows the amount of goodwill generated by the institution’s own public relations drive.

The Bulawayo Residents’ Association is currently on a crusade to raise $200,000 to erect a three-kilometre perimeter wall around the hospital and so far $10,000 has been raised with residents expected to contribute just a dollar to the initiative.

The hospital also recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with three Indian hospitals which will enable the institution to conduct specialist diagnostic operations and perform complicated operations including transplants. These are all positive developments crucial to saving Mpilo from collapse.

We applaud them. We also call on residents of Bulawayo to rally behind the hospital’s initiative to raise money for the perimeter wall. This is their hospital after all. We hope the institution will raise a substantial amount of money from its donor conference to enable it to run smoothly.

The donors’ conference shows that the administrators are thinking outside the box and willing to go the extra mile in raising funds for the hospital. The Bulawayo business community should also be applauded for responding positively to several distress calls emanating from Mpilo.

Health is a critical matter that cannot be left to the hospital authorities’ or government alone. Everyone needs to come together to save Mpilo.