Sithabile Dewah has detailed how she could not get her relative admitted at Harare’s top hospitals till he succumbed to COVID-19 last week, Aljazeera reports. Dewah said she also established you need a referral from government officials to be admitted at Arundel Hospital a private hospital in Harare reportedly established by popular tycoon Kuda Tagwirei.
Dewah said her brother in law was admitted at Avenues Clinic and it was established that he had COVID-19:
They then said he needed a ventilator and they didn’t have one. We started looking for a hospital with a ventilator.
I went to St Anne’s Hospital and they said they had beds and ventilators but had no nurses. So I tried the doctors’ numbers that I was given but I didn’t manage to go through the whole night.
In the morning, I went to Arundel Hospital, Although they were taking patients in at the new wing at the hospital, I was told I needed a referral from government officials to have him admitted. I found that weird. Even if you had the money, they were not taking in walk-in patients.
According to the publication, Dewah went to Parirenyatwa but there were no nurses at the hospital and according to the publication there was no urgency on their part and she thinks they have had too many deaths to care:
Frustrated, she left Arundel and headed to Parirenyatwa but the facility had no nurses as well and had only one ventilator. Desperate, she went back to St Anne’s again.
Although the hospital had free beds and a ventilator, the hospital officials said the facility did not have nurses and urged her to source one, an arrangement she agreed to.
The reports of the hospitals being overwhelmed by the patients were confirmed by the information ministry’s permanent secretary who said the hospitals were overrun because of the pandemic.
More: Aljazeera
