27 May 2021

Maitengwe Village Extension Team (VET) has requested the Ministry of Health and Wellness to establish a port heath unit at Maitengwe Border Post.

The request was made during a kgotla meeting for village leadership addressed by the Assistant Minister of Health and Wellness, Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe on Wednesday.

Officer-in-charge for Maitengwe border post, Mr Lucky Vincent said since the re-opening of the border on December 15, 2020, there had been high volumes of transit traffic from South Africa to Zimbabwe.

Mr Vincent said they however did not have a health expert to assist during screening of the people crossing to the neighbouring country.

He highlighted that since opening to date, they had processed 3 046 vehicles, with people on transit.

He also revealed that they conducted 2 033 COVID-19 rapid tests on 1 729 men and 304 women, with six people testing positive and returned to their countries.

Mr Vincent thus said the establishment of a port health unit was imperative, as a health expert would be in a better position to fully assist during the screening process.

For her part, nurse-in-charge for Maitengwe Clinic, Ms Hannah Moseki said they needed to be capacitated with resources, noting that the clinic had only one doctor, assisted by seven nursing staff, and only one ambulance.

Ms Moseki said in addition to the main clinic, there were three mobile stops, which they serve on a monthly basis and in times of emergency of referrals to Nyangabgwe hospital in Francistown, they fail to go out to do the monthly routines of mobile stops.

Further, she said they did not have COVID-19 testing dedicated personnel, hence even people with COVID-related symptoms queued like any other patient, until it was their turn to be attended to, which was very risky. She said although the facility was small in size, it catered for a lot of people with different needs.

In response, Mr Lelatisitswe said the pandemic had affected many facets of life, including service delivery, adding that the ministry had to use the available resources to establish isolation centres and port health units.

This, he stated, had negatively affected resources such as ambulances as well as staff, hence in some facilities people took long to be served.

He said the ministry was doing everything possible to normalise the situation, adding that government had facilitated the purchasing of COVID-19 vaccines, though it took long to arrive as they were procuring from countries that were also in crisis. ENDS