President Rupiah Banda has said Government is constructing 26 hospitals countrywide including the upgrade of Lusaka General Hospital to improve access to health care in the country.
The president said Government took a bold decision to convert health centres into hospitals in Lusaka to meet the demand of the increasing population that has been causing congestion at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH).
Commissioning the newly-built theatres at the upgraded Chawama Hospital in Lusaka yesterday, President Banda said eight out of the 26 hospitals would be completed this year.
“Undoubtedly, this will improve the access to health care for our people. This is a clear indication of the great desire by my Government to provide services for all the people of Zambia,” the president said.
He said the upgrading of the five health clinics in Lusaka to level one hospital had cost Government K65 billion, which has been paid from the treasury.
Mr Banda said it was important to decongest the UTH so that it could concentrate on referral cases.
“The increased burden of disease has also been responsible for the congestion. It is important to mention that the UTH is a referral hospital for the whole country that is why it is critical to decongest it,” he said.
Mr Banda said before the upgrade of Chawama Hospital, all operations including caesarean sections, cleaning of injuries and draining of abscesses were done at the UTH.
[pullquote] “The increased burden of disease has also been responsible for the congestion. It is important to mention that the UTH is a referral hospital for the whole country that is why it is critical to decongest it,” he said.
“This means that apart from alleviating the work load at UTH, you will be able to care for your loved ones [/pullquote]closer to your homes. I know most of you have to spend money on transport and on providing your relatives and friends with personal care after they have been operated on at the UTH,” he said.
President Banda said with the commissioning of the theaters, work would immediately start at Chawama Hospital.
“Additionally, some of the specialists at the UTH will be coming to Chawama and indeed other hospitals to provide the required services. The necessary equipment that will be used in these facilities has been mobilised,” he said.
The president thanked health workers who work tirelessly to ensure that Zambians get good health care.
And in a vote of thanks, Chawama resident Potipher Tembo commended Government for the timely action to upgrade the Chawama Hospital.
Mr Tembo said because of the increased population in Chawama, the upgrading of the hospital would help the people in the area.
“The upgrading of the hospital is testimony of your Government’s care for the people of Chawama,” he said.
Mr Tembo appealed to the president to consider buying a standby generator for the hospitals.
The president then assured the podium and the crowd that came to witness the commissioning that a standby generator would be procured and delivered immediately.
And a health practitioner Tuckson Lambart has said the upgrade of the five hospitals in Lusaka will greatly help healthcare delivery.
Some Chawama residents spoken to by the Times expressed happiness with the upgrade of the Chawama Hospital.
Forum for Progressive Politics (FPP) secretary general Charles Kafumbo who is a resident of Chawama said the upgrade demonstrates that President Banda’s Government has a vision for the people.
Another resident Rhoda Phiri who has lived in the area for 26 years said she was happy that the hospital had been upgraded because now mothers could deliver at the hospital.
Meanwhile President Rupiah Banda yesterday said Zambians should not tolerate men who batter their wives.
The president said jokingly in response to the Master of Ceremony Herbet Mutabi that his Church should join hands with women to protest against wife battery.
Last week Kasama Central Patriotic Front (PF) Member of Parliament Geoffrey Mwamba was arrested for beating his wife Chama.
[ Times of Zambia ]
“President Banda said eight out of the 26 hospitals would be completed this year.”
Great news.
It is now clear that things are not favoring my President Sata and God is against his dream. Zambians and the world community are seeing a success story for RB. From Japan to the Global multilateral institutions its all accollades for RB and his Zambia.What issues are we going to campaign on with these landmark developments across the country of Hospitals, new theaters, maternity wards, schools, Roads networks, Port hubs, railways and jobs being created daily? If The international community and their multilateral institutions have not been corrupted by MMD or RB being one of them from his UN years contacts, then we are in trouble.Its time for change of strategy to move an apathetic voter in Zed too comfortable with MMD machinaries.
Can more insults help our pact against this pro-development ambitious RB????? Now i see why MMD propagandists here are unreservadly confident of crashing our pact in 2011.Where is my father Bwalya Arch-Bishop Mpundu to give us missing momentum?
# 2& 3 Dont mislead people. Have you seen the same ‘hospital’ they are talking about in Chawama? I wouldnt refer to such structures as hospital. Why do we have people from Chawama running to the delapidated UTH. Can you list the Schools, Roads etc you are talking about? Only a F.OO.L will praise RB and his clan. Zimbabwe has better infrustrature than Zambia. We are talking about a country without support from Major donor community for some time now. Only the other day there was a report on patients sleeping on the floor at UTH. How are we going to manage the ‘NEW’ hospitals if we have failed to run our main hospital UTH? Patients in hospital are fed like p.i.gs and you busy praising your felllow thieves. One day………………….
#4 continue burying your head in the sand like your leader HH while the rest of zambia moves on. ama jealousy ba pact will kill you and you will choke with envy at the amount of success MMD continues to score. i dont know which dilapidated UTH your relatives go to when it is a state of the art hospital. pipo of chawama are very happy and its only indoshi who cant appreciate good things
# 4,
It is one thing to criticize government for poor initiatives and lack of action. However we should get behind it when they are doing good. More/improved hospitals = better access to health care and better working conditions for our health professionals. I do not know the details yet, but the initiative is good.
The building projects you are seeing in Zambia are a campaign strategy for RB. The real loosers are Zambians. 1: The money being used is borrowed from China, at exorbitant rates because China knows MMD is desperate to maintain power. 2: Mulongoti is works and supply minister, so they are tempering with tendering procedures, resulting in inflated contract sums. So the MMD gets a cut for towards their election costs. Poor tendering guarantees poor value for money on your facilities. 3: The tax payer till pick up the cost in the future when RB and the group are too old to remember a thing; 4: The strategy they have adopted will lead to china getting back resources for a song, because they have bought your leaders. 5: school with no teachers? 6: hospitals with no Doctors?
It amazes me when you see the educated use their eduction to rape their own country. Leaders of other countries ensure that their people are protected. Look at Chile, if the mine accident happened in Zambia, no resources could have been mobilised to rescue the miners. Foolishly, people think RB is doing a gret job like KK did! No one will forgive Zambia the debts anymore because they know that utuma politicians will eat the money anyway. Zambians are so easy to manipulate because they dont see the problem that is coming even 3 months in the future. Surely, if they cannot afford a bed at UTH, where are they getting money to build hositals? ZRA collections have been abysmal, we know that! KK left 7.5bln USA inkongole, RB will leave 5bn. Mukafwa nensala bane!
And if you elect them or shall we say when they rig elections and continue in power, it will be 5 years of paying back. Real spending cuts on the poor to ensure they pay back ama loans. A normal person can see beyond these projects. Expect more proparaganda from Times of MMD, now that they know the PACT if strong.
#7,8,9 If that is the case, then what is the opposition’s policy to build more hospitals and improve healthcare? How will they ensure that the populace at large can access healthcare, pay a decent wage to health professionals and more importantly where will they get the money from? Also if Zambia has got loans from China it does not matter who is in power, the money will still have to be paid back as the money was incurred by the state and not MMD. So your alarmist scenario of spending cuts will be the same whoever is in power. Instead of just criticising when a govt opens a new hospital, please show us how the political parties who you believe will deliver this country to paradise will do things differently, otherwise you come across as a sore loser.
#10: I do not praise a government for work that they are paid to do. We need to change that mentality. 2: If you borrow 10$ to build a hospital that needed only 4$, does that show prudence in the management resources? The idea of building is great; but the approach is not sustainable and poorly implemented. Even the so called PPP projects can fail because of politics. If their approach was above reproach, i would be the first to comment on how good the strategy is; however, the strategy they are using is so short-sighted, driven mainly by their personal agenda to maintain power. That is no way to develop a country bwana. I apologise if I sound alarmist, but i am trained to see problems in infrastructure years before they become visible to the naked eye, so to say.
continued: And i do not belong ato any party because my work serves everyone regardless of their political affiliation. For me, a spade is a spade. Current expenditure commitment to infrastructure in Zed are running unsustainably high, when we know credit at worldwide level is expensive. So how is the government managing to attract such credit levels? Either through high rates or through commitments for future payments in kind. In the end, you are right, we all pay a heavy price for these decisions.
Fwaka in #8 you dont sound patriotic. I am not against your analysis but your last point where you say ..”mukafwa bane”….To me this sounds very unpatriotic simply because today you are in the diaspora. Remember that is not your home and the hour of reckoning will come when your children or children’s children will need to come back. These things will catch up with them….i mean the debt repayment. I now understand why the constitution has a clause that one must have attained a certain number of years living in the country for him/her to stand as a presidential candidate. Some people in the diaspora behave as though Zambia is not their country.
#13: MK: the yardstick for measuring patriotism can be debatable, hence i can only concur with your opinion about my being unpatriotic. However, an opinion is neither right nor wrong. The most important point is you are able to say your opinion. Brother, i am a very patriotic Zambian who has contributed a lot to Zambia, through deeds, not words. In fact my pointing out these key issues of the MMD strategy emanates from the very issue of patriotism. But insala yena i cannot die of it because am in diaspora, no, but because we grow a lot of cassava in the village. The diaspora for me has been a temporal reprieve for the many of us who have been let down by our mother land, in a way or two. Instead of us walloping in poverty, we used our education to get here; Zed is our final destination.
4
Motsepe
Those arguing with you are seeing imaginary things. Don’t worry about them because their job is to see the invisible. But bottom line is does my old grand mother in Mwense read Lusaka Times to see the propaganda by Senior Citizen and his cohorts? No! Only what she feels is what is going to make her love or hate MMD no the bull shit by these ghosts
Fwaka
can you just shut up if you always want to criticise even where you have no facts?
Good news for us kombonix let them bring drugs as well
Right # 4
People can you distinguish facts aganist propaganda, that facility in chawama is a clinic and can be a hospital even in Iraq. We all know chawama here, what is the problem. Going into a clinc and put a maternity ward does not make it a hospital. This is all propagandaand Lusaka Times is a MMD mouth piece we all know it, just look at the negativity towards the pact.Patients sleep on floors at UTH, and you will never read it on this website, never.
miyoba check with MOH on how Zambia defines her health care facilities startng with the Health post … to UTH
HEALTH CARE FACILITIES ARE DEFINED BY THE SERVICE THEY PROVIDE
These are things we have been waiting for. Development. Thanks to His Excellency RB
#18 miyoba- Up grading clinics to some standard is not a new thing. I remember our Chawama Clinic in Cchingola Chabanya/Maiteneke was just a small thing but now it has more room so I dont see the excitment on this one,
Ba Deja Vu bakamba, give credit where it is due.You only live once,release the hate inside you.
#16: You sound like an MMD millitia Colnel: Ati “can you just shut up”? No command. I have data, and have give you the data. You are amazed that not everyone working on these projects will be indimidated. See, even buying farm produce our government is borrowing!! How can a normal government fail to plan for bumber harvest? Ati we only planned for 40k metric tons, now we have 170; that is an under-budget of over 200%. What is your response to that? If you guys want to lead a country to in the 21st century you have to embrace modern analytical thinking to the resolution of hardships, not the UNIP style of intimidation. Quality speaks for itself, and there is no quality in the leadrship of today in Zed, FACT.
Tatuleponta, we just want what is best for our mother land. In fact people will be better off voting for a mouse, not a frog; pantu koswe kuti twamulya when hunger bites.
TO FWAKA The building projects you are seeing in Zambia are a campaign strategy for RB (you are wrong check the dev plans under mwanawasa 2: Mulongoti is tempering with tendering procedures, (Shooting in the dark is kachepa bring facts. The other stuff sounds good over staff resources and scarcity
May be I am reading this wrong. Can someone tell me one hospital that has been built and where? I have seen the mentioning of the Chawama Hopsital, but whenI read further, I see they are mentioning refurbishing. Is refurbishing the same as building? Without being or sounding pessimistic, when are these new hospitals openning? MMD cadres on LT, please help me, mention one new hospital or even health clinic that has been built by Banda. Other question is, if Banda was building hospitals at the rate he has mentioned, why did he have to borrow money for mobile hospitals? This sounds like Banda is hallucinating. Putting red polish at Chawama clinic does not turn it into a hospital. Well, without sounding tribal, have you observed the people who spoke about this clinic? Bandas, UNIP, LOL.
And we just borrowed K300bn for 9 mobile hospitals! Why not construct permanent structures with this money? And where are these 26 hospitals which have been constructed? They should be very visible to everyone by now. The budget deficit is currently at 33% of GDP. How will this be liquidated?
Probably with the building of new hospitals should come with modern technology as these hospitals are new. Why go to SA for a pain in your knew Mr Banda? What equipment are you installing in these new hospitals? Probably the best answer you can give us is how much did you spend on these hospitals? Definitely there must be some cash attached to this development. Lie again, how much was spent? Then show us the hospitals that way we can physically assess the expenditure to the structures as you purport you have done.
If no one in the MMD pack mentions any of these hospitals, it would be prudent for all Zambians to regard Mr Banda as a big fat liar.
23
VJ Rigger – What credit? the guy is just campaigning. Next he will be openning toilets as part of the strategy.