A group of professionals from across all sectors have come together and formed a “Save Our Hospitals Initiative” aimed at assisting the country’s ailing health care sector.
The noble initiative is a brainchild of veteran journalist Hopewell Chin’ono who has assembled team that will voluntarily mobilise both local and international well-wishers aid and intervene in the critical needs of the local health care sector as stated by senior doctors in their meeting with the Health minister Obadiah Moyo this week.
Below is the list of the ‘guardians’ and statement issued by Chin’ono:
We now have a team in place to turn the idea into a reality God Willing.
The team will form the Core Group that will help as guardians of the Save Our Hospitals initiative.
They are:
Beatrice Mtetwa Human Rights Lawyer.
Pindie Nyandoro Standard Bank Group Regional Chief Executive for the Southern & Central African region.
Prof Rati Nhdlovu Nephrologist & Professor of Medicine (UZ).
Dr Solomon Guramatunhu Ophthalmologist
Mucha Mkanganwi CEO Pulse Pharmaceuticals
Dr Charles Mazhude GU Medicine Consultant, Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust, UK
Ben Manyenyeni Former Mayor Harare & Corporate Business Consultant
Prof Dixon Chibanda Consultant Psychiatrist & Professor of Psychiatry at UZ and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Dr Donald Mutangadura Consultant Dermatologist
Bishop Chad Gandiya Anglican Church
This group of volunteers (unpaid) will be joined by one senior doctor (consultant) from every one of the referral hospitals in Zimbabwe.
The five hospitals are Harare, Parirenyatwa, Mpilo, UBH and Chitungwiza.
The initiative will seek to assist these hospitals by mobilizing resources both at home and abroad. W
It will step in where government would have failed to supply the needed medical consumables and or equipment, this will be done with the consent of the Ministry of Health.
NO MONEY will exchange hands at any given time because what the initiative seeks to do is supply the material that the hospitals need and not cash.
Individual citizens and corporates will pay for the material they want to donate themselves and only deliver the goods to the hospitals.
The Core Group will also be the custodian of the process from start to finish between the hospitals and the citizenry and corporates to ensure accountability, trust and long term planning.
The five hospitals will set up trusts that will be run by senior doctors who are Heads of Departments in those hospitals.
These trusts through a representative will then hand over a report detailing their needs to the Core Group that will then make the call out for assistance.
The number of departments will determine the number of trustees per hospital.
The chairperson of each trust will have a seat on the Core Group so each hospital will know what will be happening at the other hospitals.
The chairperson of the Core Group will be decided when they meet for their inaugural meeting on Monday.
The Core Group will be there to help the hospital trusts with ideas and with mobilizing the required resources and providing expert advice at NO cost at all to the hospital trusts.
The Core Group will also seek a meeting with the Minister of Health to present their views and make him understand the purpose of this initiative because the Minister is the legal custodian of public hospitals.
He is also the one who will assist in getting government to issue customs rebate certificates for any equipment bought outside the country by citizens and corporates.
I will communicate with you on what the group would have agreed on after their inaugural meeting.
In the meantime, Zimbabweans and Friends of Zimbabwe in the diaspora should start organizing themselves by creating structures that will drive this process forward.
This initiative belongs to you, our country and all who live in it, it is non partisan or sectarian.
As I have said above and also in the morning, this is a non-partisan initiative meant to harness the desire expressed by citizens and corporates to help our hospitals and our doctors.
Please feel free to suggest anything that you think can be of help in driving this process not only to fruition, but to becoming a long term project that can withstand the test of time.
Any good institution should be able to outlive those that would have started it, there will be many health care related initiatives that will be explored by this group.
This will include providing gap years for local nurses and doctors and also facilitating international nurses and doctors to come and volunteer here for free.
I have seen this in Ethiopia, there are many Zimbabweans working in healthcare who have loads of ideas, this would be the platform to put them through.
Ultimately it is the country that will gain from this initiative as it will invariably spread out to other areas of health care where assistance would be needed.
Please feel free to suggest anything that you think will add value.
My email address is hopewell2@post.harvard.edu
I will release the contact details of the core group and the hospital trustees once they meet and agree on methods of communication.
Please share this post in your networks on social media so that as many of our people are aware of this initiative.
Pangu Ndapedza!
@daddyhope