Zimdef funds research hospitals

THE Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef) will bankroll the construction of specialised research and teaching hospitals at State universities in a bid to promote research on pandemics such as COVID-19, a senior Zimdef official has said.

Zimdef chief executive Sebastian Marume told NewsDay that the fund currently supports two research and teaching hospitals at the Midlands State University (MSU), and the University of Zimbabwe (UZ).

“As Zimdef, we are funding what we refer to as research and teaching hospitals,” Marume said last Friday on the sidelines of a strategic workshop held in Gweru.

“We want to differentiate research and teaching hospitals from others which are more of treatment hospitals. We have one (research and teaching hospital) at UZ and this year we funded them (with) $200 million, we will be funding them again next year and they will be researching on the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“When there was an outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were so many doctors in the developed world who were involved in research of that disease. That is the direction that we need to take that whenever we have a (medical) challenge, we do research.”

Marume said Zimdef was also funding the setting up of a pathological hospital at MSU.

“We were sending some pathological tests to South Africa and the results would take one week. At times when the results come back the patient would have already died. So if we have a pathological department at MSU you would find that all tests would be done locally,” he said.

While Zimdef was also financing infrastructure at higher learning institutions, Marume said the most expensive task was acquiring equipment as it is imported.

He said a research and teaching hospital would also be established at the Great Zimbabwe University.

“We want to have specialised hospitals so that people don’t need to travel outside the country for treatment,” he said.