Parirenyatwa Hospital, one of the country’s largest referral centres, is operating at half its capacity due to a serious shortage of theatre staff.
Theatre matron Mada Musodza said 10 out of a possible 21 theatre rooms were operating due to staff shortage.
She said at present they had 16 theatres nurses instead of a normal complement of 50 nurses.
“We have fully-equipped state-of-the-art theatres, but we cannot have them all running because of shortage of staff,” said Musodza.
“We are not coping at all, so we need that to be addressed. We have a problem of staff shortage, that is what is really affecting us. We are currently running on 10 operating theatres instead of 21.”
Musodza made the remarks during a tour of the hospital by Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe on Monday.
“All we are asking for is for the government to look at our salaries, on how best they can improve them because we are losing nurses due to poor remuneration,” she said.
She added that although the hospital trained theatre nurses they left for “greener pastures” soon after training.
