Pregnant women are being forced to sleep on the floor of Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals’ Mbuya Nehanda Maternity Hospital.
Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals spokesperson Lenos Dhire told NewsDay that they had to make floor beds to accommodate the women because the hospital was overwhelmed. Said Dhire:
This has resulted in the creation of floor beds to accommodate all the mothers.
In our view, this is a result of a weak referral system due to the malfunctioning of the City of Harare clinics.
Some mothers come in as walk-in patients when they are already in labour.
As a government hospital, we do not turn away any maternity cases at Mbuya Nehanda Maternity Hospital. We ensure that everyone who comes is attended to.
Under normal circumstances, as a referral hospital, we are supposed to attend to complicated cases while simpler cases are attended to at municipal level.
He said the ideal nurse-to-patient ratio in the labour ward is 1:1, but that was not attainable currently due to a high turnover of midwives.