MIDLANDS province’s major referral health institution, Gweru General Hospital, has reportedly been operating without an X-ray machine for the past three months after its only machine broke down.
Reporter by Rutendo Mawere, Own Correspondent
This came to light last weekend during Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s visit to the hospital where he was visiting party members injured in two separate incidents on their way to the MDC-T 13th anniversary celebrations in Bulawayo.
“There is no X-ray here, president, and although I suspect my legs could be broken I am still to go for an X-ray,” Tendai Moyo, one of the injured MDC-T members who was involved in a kombi crash last Saturday near Gweru told Tsvangirai.
MDC-T Midlands South provincial elections director Obert Tachi Ncube told NewsDay on Wednesday that they had taken their seven injured supporters who had been admitted at the hospital to a private hospital for the X-ray services.
“There was no X-ray machine at Gweru General Hospital and we took our supporters to Claybank where we were charged between $60 and $80,” Ncube said.
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Several patients interviewed by NewsDay yesterday said the absence of an X-ray machine had inconvenienced them as they could not afford the charges demanded by private hospitals.
Midlands provincial medical director Dr Milton Chemhuru said he had not yet been informed that the hospital did not have a functional X-ray machine.
At the time of going to print, the hospital’s medical superintendent, Fabian Mashingaidze, had not responded to questions e-mailed to him.