The Chronicle

BULAWAYO, Saturday, July 16, 1995 — The Bulawayo City Council is facing a critical shortage of doctors, reports the Director of Health Services, Dr Barnett Nyathi.

Dr Nyathi told a meeting of the Health, Housing, Amenities and Liquor Committee that two clinical medical officers left the local authority last year, leaving three officers to run the council’s 16 clinics and an infectious diseases hospital.

According to the latest council minutes, Dr Nyathi said the council had advertised three times but failed to get any responses. It had then been decided to engage part-time doctors to work for a few hours a day in the hope that some of them would get attracted to working for the local authority.

Dr Nyathi said of the three clinical medical officers working for the council, one was permanently stationed at the infectious diseases hospital in Thorngrove, leaving the other two to run all the 16 municipal clinics. The deputy Director of Health Services, Dr Rita Dlodlo, and the assistant director of Health Services, Dr Florence Ndlovu, were having to do some work in the clinics.

Meanwhile, the council has received a vehicle for use in running its sexually transmitted diseases programme, Dr Nyathi said. In a related development, the council has completed refurbishment of Khami Road Clinic into an STD training centre and is due to hold its first course this month.

Dr Nyathi said participants would be drawn from the council’s nursing staff, health institutions in Masvingo, the Midlands, Matabeleland North and South provinces.