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Chronicle Reporter 

HEALTH and Child Care Minister Dr Obadiah Moyo has embarked on a project to equip public hospitals with machinery courtesy of President Mnangagwa’s travels. 

Dr Moyo told legislators that Government had already engaged India and the United Arab Emirates to help the country source medication given foreign currency shortages. 

“We have been lucky that our President, through his travels, has managed to bring back some machines for our public hospitals. We are also going to tender to ensure that we increase the number of pieces of equipment that are available in our hospitals but you must realise that it will also take a long time for us to be able to fill up all the institutions with equipment that is of a modern standard,” he said.

According to Dr Moyo, the equipment coming from China, Japan and German was of high quality and members of the public were guaranteed of improved health services. 

“So, because of shortages of foreign currency to acquire those pieces of equipment, we are also going on a public private partnership arrangement so that the companies or investors bring the equipment into the country and we work with them. Likewise with laboratory equipment, they will bring in the equipment and we will utilise the machines on the basis of purchasing of merely the consumables which are reagents,” said Dr Moyo. 

“We are also pursuing the bonded warehouse arrangement as well as supporting the industry so that we manufacture locally and save on foreign currency which is not available. We are talking about local manufacturing where we are going to be asking the local pharmaceutical manufacturers to produce for us the essential medicines”.

The Minister also assured Parliamentarians that the machines and medicines would be distributed fairly across all public health institutions in Zimbabwe.