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Rosenthal Mutakati Ghetto Blast
AN elderly man lay writhing in pain on the stretcher bed as a female senior citizen, presumably the sick grandpa’s wife, struggled to keep him warm in a tattered blanket they had brought from home while feeling his pulse with the back of her bare hands. “Ko ndatadzei-ko Ishe wangu? Jehovha pindirai,” the elderly woman muttered while adjusting her head dress with wrinkled fingers which testified that she had seen many seasons.

Near this elderly couple were countless other stretcher bed-ridden patients of various age groups seeking medical attention.

The absence of drip stands made others hoist their drips with one hand as the contents swilled into their bodies through the cannular.

Some had open fresh wounds that oozed blood, while others were in tears owing to the pain they were enduring.

Countless others were crammed on a long bench discussing various issues with no one to serve them in this big room which  reeked of booze, blood, medicines and disinfectants.

Ambulance crews came in rushing with the injured, but they were also made to join the queue because the resuscitation room was filled to the brim.

In one corner of this big room were lads donning white dust-coats with stethoscopes hanging loose on their bellies and a handful of nurses who were chatting while having tea.

Only one nurse followed the queue putting a thermometer under patients’ armpits, recording numbers in either red or black, before moving to the next one.

So rough was this onion-shaped young lady that the moment she opened her mouth, everyone shuddered to think whether such language suits a hospital.

Inquisitive elderly women who beckoned her for clarification were quickly reminded: “Musandijairire. Handini ndaita kuti murware. Mukada kunetsa tinodaidza mupurisa okudzingai.”

Such are the goings on in some of the hospitals, gentle reader.

Instead of being places of hope, some hospitals have been reduced to death halls.

Hopelessness is now the catch phrase at hospitals, where it is no longer unusual to find a deceased patient in the same room with the living. Only the wailing of friends and relatives alert you to deaths that occur in these halls.

Falling ill is as if you have committed a crime.

It can be worse for those without medical aid who always have to make do with public health facilities.

As I commit pen to paper, gentle reader, patients are paying through the nose to jump the queue and be attended to.

While those with relatives are assured of better services, the opposite is true for those without.

“Mudhara tazviona munhu ari kurwara, but kuti tikuitirei yakanunira motobvisa twushagi mbichana. Hatidi yakawanda asi twati chete,” you hear clerks at medical facilities saying.

If your wife is in labour, it can cost an arm and a leg for her to get the best possible services.

Some young men and women at these institutions are playing with the lives of people.

And they do not deny it.

“Hupenyu wenyu huri mumaoko angu, saka motoita zvinoita kuti ndishande ndakafara,” the blokes say without caring about the plight of thousands of people in need of their services.

Naughty doctors have flings with their patients, while some women offer sex to medical practitioners to ensure their ailing relatives are afforded reasonable services.

This cuts between the sexes. Female medical practitioners have their own way of demanding favours from patients.

If you were once in love with a nurse and happen to fall sick, you choose to die alone than let her lay her hands on you.

“Vanachiremba vazvino havachina han’ya. Zvinokusiya uchifa kana wakazviramba. You die without anyone caring about you,” I heard some girls saying in a kombi.

Gentle reader, the sick are always at the mercy of doctors and nurses who find it compelling to answer their cellphones at the expense of serving the sick.

The moment you bring it to the attention of the nurses that you are being made to bite the shortest end of the cherry, you are put under the spotlight and made to pay the price for asking.

“If you know much why did you come to hospital? Dai muchigona kuzvirapa mungadai musina kumbobvira mauya kuno kuchipatara, seiko varwere muchinetsa kudaro nhai?” you hear nurses telling patients straight in the face.

Gentle reader, if you have a sick relative you better keep your cool because the moment you complain about something, that patient will be left to die.

So uncaring has today’s nurse become that some people would rather die at home than go to hospital.

Some patients run away the moment you offer to take them to hospital.

“Kana kuri kuGomo kana kuParirenyatwa handiende. Munin’ina wangu akafa ndichiona. Handiende kunouraiwa netupwere twuri ikweyo,” I heard a sickly old woman declaring.

But do today’s medical practitioners understand their jobs?

Are they in it for a calling or just for the cash and prestige?

Some, I am sure, are nurses just because of the milky white uniforms and nothing else.

Ruthlessness best describes their conduct.

Nursing is a profession within the health care sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life.

Nurses may be differentiated from other health care providers by their approach to patient care, training, and scope of practice. Nurses practice, experts say, in a wide diversity of practice areas with a different scope of practice and level of prescriber authority in each.

Many nurses provide care within the ordering scope of physicians, and this traditional role has come to shape the historic public image of nurses as care providers. However, nurses are permitted by most jurisdictions to practice independently in a variety of settings depending on training level.

But what the books say differs from what is obtaining on the ground.

People accuse them of being the agents of death and conniving with funeral parlours to kill people.

Whether true or false, Zimbabwe can be a better place if nurses and doctors fight to boost confidence in hospitals.

Inotambika mughetto.