The health delivery system in Zimbabwe is facing another setback as nurses at one of Zimbabwe’s largest hospitals Mpilo are currently in a disagreement with their management over Personal Protective Clothing (PPE). The nurses are accusing their management of forcing them to work without PPE in a risky environment.
The nurses have refused to work without protective clothing given they have chances of attending covid-19 patients. The nurses are protesting against Clinical Director Dr Solwayo Ngwenya and CEO Mr Mabhandi
Below is a petition to the authorities:
Date: 27 March 2020
We can not be insulted, degraded and made to feel stupid by Dr Solwayo Ngwenya, accompanied by Mr Mabhandi the hospital CEO, when he was addressing us on issues which are way above his grade. He bluntly told us to go to hell and dn’t acknowledge or appreciate the role were are playing in this trying time our country is facing with the rest of the whole.Yes, PPEs are a challenge for even NHS in the United kingdom and other far well developed countries but his utterances actually incited us to pen this open letter and give you an ultimatum. Few weeks ago nurses demonstrated against the CEO and he never responded when he had enough time to prioritise and buy protective masks and clothing. He never did. What he ( Mr Mabhandi) called Primrose Sibanda to threaten her.Today they both threatened to fire us when we are actually doing our most best in this challenging times. Group threes(General Hands) are actually running the show in Maternity and other stations.They both don’t acknowledge and appreciate that in order to motivate us to even do better.They actually called for a meeting to embarrass us that we are not wanted. Indirectly telling us to go home because we will all die of Covid-19 and infect our families.Dr Ngwenya has a hospital and told his staff to go home. He wants the same for our hospital. We therefore, give you 48 hours to excuse these two as they are anti state and anti humanity. We are pulling our unwarranted services from Monday if the Head office or HE does not respond. Send this to every group, every social media platform so that the authorities see. Especially the President and the Minister of Health and Child care and the Minister of State for Bulawayo affairs.