Zimbabwe Hospitals Doctors Association (ZHDA) has written a letter to the Health Services Board threatening to withdraw their duties if protective measures to protect against coronavirus at Parirenyatwa Hospital are not put in place.
The healthcare professional says they noticed a lack of preparedness at government health institutions in terms of controlling the pandemic also called COVID-19.
“The lack of clear direction and training has resulted in overcrowding at entry points to health facilities and left frontline medical personnel attending to patients without the bare minimum of Personal Protective Equipment,” ZHDA president Tawanda Zvamada says in the letter.
“As professionals working in close quarters with high-risk individuals, our health and indeed our survival and that of our families is at stake. As such, strict measures must be put in place urgently to protect us and the nation at large.”
Doctors in the letter gave some measures for the government to follow for the medical practitioners to continue offering services.
The Parirenyatwa doctors are demanding hospitals to scale down to emergency mode with immediate effect and the cessation of all routine outpatient departments operations.
Measures also include adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) to be availed to all healthcare workers at highest risk and mandatory screening at all points of entry.
Zimbabwe’s medical practitioners are also demanding separate entry and exit points for health workers, clean water and sanitisers to be readily accessible throughout the hospital.
Other measures include suspension of visiting of inpatients to avoid crowding inwards and corridors; specialized trained taskforce to attend to suspected Corona cases; Health Care Workers (HCW) to be discussed in a transparent manner to allay the current fears of the practitioners and also that patients requiring emergency services to be accompanied by at most one other person.