Nurses down tools to fill holes
Mulalo Mudzuli remembers coming to the clinic in early December. Inside the consulting rooms, one thing was missing: the nurses.
“All the nurses had left the consulting rooms and were outside in the clinic yard filling holes,” says Mudzuli. “They told us that there was nothing else they could have done because if they didn’t fix the damage themselves, no one else would,”
The nurses’ plight seems to have touched the community, which has rallied around them.
“We, as patients and community members, feel that it is important for us to help too because it is, after all, our clinic,” adds Godfrey Ngulummbi from Mafukani. “We are determined to make it a better one because there is no other clinic nearby for us to use.”
OurHealth went to hear the side of Local Clinics Manager JK Maumela, who is based at Mutale Health Centre.
“We are aware of the damages at Matavhela Clinic because they have reported them,” Maumela says. “We, as local management, are still waiting for a response from the district, then we will take things from there.”
District officials’ apparent disregard for the clinic’s problems has only deepened residents’ commit, say some like Engedzani Maluta from Hamabila village
“What we have seen is that the department of health takes the problems of the local clinics as something unimportant,” Maluta adds. “Because of the situation, we’ve decided to gather around at the clinic as community members and help fill the holes.”
“We really are having a tough time because we have to come to the clinic and wait for the nurses to finish filling the holes,” Maluta says. “The Department of Health should consider our clinic’s concerns.”
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One comment
This is very nobel of the nurses But they were employed to nurse. The lack of accountability and service delivery of other parts of the service is depriving patients of nursing care and cannot be condoned! The problem is, failing infrastructure impacts on patient access to healthcare, nurses access to work, delivery services access to clinics to ensure supplies are available. For how much longer are we to train nurses to carry out non-nursing duties?