MURAMBINDA – Medical humanitarian organisation Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) has decentralised its operations from Murambinda Hospital to ensure more tuberculosis patients are able to access treatment.
Many people here have benefited significantly from the decentralisation of treatment. Motion Munyanyi (34), who comes from Zvishavane, said he suffered recurrent bouts of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB until his relatives brought him to Murambinda Hospital where he has been receiving treatment since.
“I could not walk then,” he said in a recent interview. “But now I am able to walk short distances and do some exercises.”
Another patient, Kudzai Taranhike (43), from Mukoto, said he got infected while living in Seke and decided to relocate to his rural home.
“While in Seke, I went to several clinics until I realised it was unbearable. I told my wife that I was going back home so that if I die, I would be at my rural home,” he said.
MSF head of the Murambinda HIV and Aids project, James Mutharia, said they had since decentralised operations from Murambinda Hospital. “We have been able to move patients closer to their homes,” he said.
“This was after realising the biggest handicap was the distance travelled by patients.”
According to the WHO Global TB Report (2011), TB is the second biggest killer globally today. Currently, an estimated 12 million people are living with TB.
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According to MSF, less than 5% of TB patients worldwide have access to proper diagnosis of drug resistance, and only 10 percent of MDR-TB patients are estimated to have access to treatment — far less in low-resource settings where prevalence is highest.
