By Staff Reporter
Zimbabwe’s Parliament is pushing for a policy change that would allow the country’s largest general hospital, Parirenyatwa, to generate its own income and improve its ability to deliver quality care.
Parirenyatwa has been struggling financially for a long time, leading to shortages of critical resources like medicine, treatment equipment, and trained specialists. This, in turn, has resulted in a decline in the quality of service patients receive.
A Parliamentary Health Committee led by Daniel Molokele recently visited Parirenyatwa, specifically focusing on the dire state of the hospital’s cancer treatment center. In response to the situation, Molokele pledged that the committee would advocate for policy changes that would grant Parirenyatwa greater autonomy.
“Our responsibility is to make sure that access to health services especially for cancerous diseases must not be a preserve for a few Zimbabweans, it must be for every Zimbabwean and as things stand we hear that a lot of people are dying because emphasis is on money.
“We think the real problem is not money, but rather the legal and policy framework around administration of these healthcare services. What we need to see is institutions such as Parirenyatwa, Mpilo, getting more autonomy in terms of ability to provide services at a fee.
“We are going to push for policy and legal framework so that those people going to India and South Africa or the private sector for healthcare services actually access it here, what we call commercialization and then Parirenyatwa will use the profits to fund the public front of it so that more people can access the service.
“So I think the era of Parirenyatwa waiting for someone to pay for the repairs or the maintenance of these machines has to come to an end, they must have the ability to pay for themselves and that is the direction we are going to push for,” Molokele said.
The aim of this policy shift is to improve access to healthcare, particularly cancer treatment, for all Zimbabweans. Ideally, with more financial resources, Parirenyatwa could address equipment breakdowns like the non-functional cancer treatment machines that have been inoperable for over five years.
