EKUSILENI Medical Centre is struggling to raise US$3,4 million needed to upgrade the 200-bed specialist facility to house COVID-19 patients from Bulawayo.
BY PATRICIA SIBANDA
IAM4BYO — Fighting COVID-19 was tasked to mobilise the resources at the beginning of the lockdown in March.
Speaking to the Southern Eye at Ekusileni Medical Centre yesterday #IAM4BYO chairperson Busisa Moyo said the hospital might start taking in patients in July depending on donations received. Companies such as Edgars, National Tested Seeds, Innscor Africa, and #IAM4BYO in the United States of America among others donated various items to the institution.
“We are moving but not fast enough as l said. We now have an opening date at the end of month or first week of July between those two dates. We should see this place opening. It will be 50 beds, but it is a 200-bed hospital so we want to see that completed but to fully kit it up with all the things that are needed. We need a US$3,4 million,” he said.
He said government had also put in lot of resources towards equipping the centre.
“We have gone a distance in getting that through donations but the government has also given us a hand in getting the hospital ready, the Ministry of (Local Government and Public) Works has also been working in this sector,” he said.
Moyo said the #IAM4BYO initiative also catered for other isolation centres in the city including Mater Dei, Thorngrove, United Bulawayo Hospitals and Mpilo Central Hospital.
