Govt must abandon mobile hospitals – Longwe

Govt must abandon mobile hospitals – Longwe
By Agness Changala
Wed 08 Sep. 2010, 04:01 CAT

GOVERNMENT must abandon mobile hospitals and instead build more physical health infrastructure, gender activist Sara Longwe has advised.

Longwe said it was shameful that the government had spent so much money on the failed National Constitutional Conference (NCC) process and increased salaries of constitutional office holders and other officers at the expense of solving problems in the health sector.

She said the quality of health services in the country had deteriorated and the construction of the few hospitals was just a drop in the ocean because Lusaka alone needed about 10 big hospitals to cater to the existing population.

“They are just a drop in the ocean. They plan to procure mobile hospitals without proper roads,” Longwe said.

She said Zambia had no infrastructure, which could support the operation of mobile hospitals. She said people wanted hospitals which they could easily access.

Longwe said the evacuation of government officials and politicians to other countries for medical attention should be banned to enable them to seek treatment from the local hospitals.

She said such an approach could force them to improve the conditions in the hospital because currently they did not care about their people.

Longwe wondered why the state’s application to register the London High Court judgment which found former president Frederick Chiluba and others guilty of defrauding Zambians was dismissed because the money involved, if recovered, could have been ploughed into the health sector.

She said Zambia had no leadership and it was being run on autopilot.

“There’s no leadership, we are self-governing,” she said. “With this situation, the women are the ones who suffer most, nurses are not being paid and these issues were brought to their attention by Chansa Kabwela but they decided to ignore.”

Longwe said most nurses and other health workers’ altitude was demoralising and insulting because they were frustrated.

She urged the government to invest in human resource and hospitals if the future of the country was to be secured. Longwe advised women not to vote for the current government because it had failed to govern the nation.

And Citizens Forum executive secretary Simon Kabanda said the problem of congestion at UTH was a sign of a breakdown in governance.

Kabanda said the government had failed to govern the nation going by the manner in which the health sector was being managed.

Kabanda, who described the situation as nauseating, said what was happening at the hospital was the reality of the health sector in many parts of the country.

He appealed to the government to redeem itself from failure and exhibit concern for the suffering citizens.

“And government has an opportunity to redeem itself by ensuring that the next budget pays particular attention to the health sector before it completely collapses,” Kabanda said.

Kabanda said time and again Citizen’s Forum had drawn the attention of the government to the situation at UTH, and other health centres in the country but the government had been paying a deaf ear to their pleas.

In April this year, the NCC procured microphones at a cost of K1.8 billion at the time it was concluding its work.

Kabanda, who objected to their decision, argued that abuse of funds by the NCC could not be allowed, when the health sector was limping.

He said several clinics of Lusaka had no syrups for children and mothers stood outside clinics helplessly carrying their sick children, as they were told that there was no medicine for their babies.

He said most Zambians did not have means to procure drugs from private pharmacies, an indication that the situation was worse in other parts of the country, which were equally neglected.

Congestion at UTH has continued to be a problem, with patients in some wards lying on the floor.

An on-the-spot check at the Filter clinic and D block ward on Saturday revealed that patients were subjected to sleeping on the floor in the wards and the corridors in some cases.