THE SITUATION at UBH is terrible.

I had a first-hand experience of how bad our medical facilities are. It’s shocking, I tell you!

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Yesterday, the 28th of February 2025, l had a first-hand experience of how bad our medical facilities have become. My cousin had a shoulder dislocation injury and I had to rush him to Cyrene Clinic. It was around 20:30 hrs, the clinic was closed, and one fine gentleman had to assist us by hunting down the medical staff.

A nurse arrived. She indicated that the dislocation was bad and referred us to UBH. And all she could give my cousin was paracetamol.

We quickly drove to UBH. As we drove into the facility, we were welcomed by the concerning spectacle of darkness, as the hospital was poorly lit; and parts of it had no lights at all. Also, we noticed that the hospital did not have security guards, not even one. And we thought he was strange and dangerous.

We navigated our way through the darkness and got into the casualty department. That area was just a mess. Nothing assuring was happening there. There were patients all over the place, and some of them were screaming in pain, and the hospital staff didn’t have the necessary medical tools or medication to help the patients. Medical staff were asking relatives or people who had brought in patients to go and buy medication or medical materials for them to be able to treat the patients.

The sights and sounds of the situation I witnessed last night at UBH were unbelievable. The only consolation was that the staff was visibly committed, but their commitment did not amount to much, without the necessary medication and medical equipment. They were helpless, literally.

Back to my horrifying experience with my cousin. The committed medical staff handled him professionally, I must say. They properly attended to his “shoulder dislocation”. After that, real drama followed.

The whole UBH institution did not have an arm sling, which is a bandage that is used to support an injured arm. l am not talking of an arm sling pouch, which I am told is more comfortable and more expensive, but a simple arm-sling bandage. So, realising that my cousin needed an arm sling, the good doctor decided to improvise. She quickly grabbed some plastics and engineered it into a makeshift arm sling bandage which also looked like an improvised arm sling pouch. We were left breathless and speechless but grateful.

The good doctor then discharged my cousin and told us to go and buy a proper arm sling and painkillers at a pharmacy. This reminded me of the recent incident in which a hospital in Beitbridge used makeshift cardboard splits for victims of a bus crash.

Anyway, we left UBH after my cousin was discharged. You can see the pictures I took of him with the plastic arm sling pouch and in severe pain, because UBH did not have painkillers to give him.

By that time, it was around 03:00 hrs this morning; there was no pharmacy open in Bulawayo. I only managed to purchase the arm sling and the painkillers after pharmacies opened for business around 09:00 hrs this morning.

The situation at UBH is dire.

As I mentioned, the medical staff there is great and appears to be quite committed but it is seriously, and I would say, tragically handicapped by the lack of medication and the lack of the necessary tools of their medical profession. From what my cousin experienced and what I saw, UBH is a hospital only in name. There is no hospital there. Something must really give.

It cannot be business as usual. I wonder whether the UBH CEO is aware of this and even more seriously, I wonder whether Zimbabwe has a Minister of Healthcare. The situation out there is really, really bad.

One can only imagine with trepidation the horror that is suffered by patients who go to UBH with more serious or life-threatening injuries. I doubt if they come out alive.