The ManicaPost
Health Reporter
ZIMBABWE Medical Association (ZIMA) Manicaland Branch will tomorrow (Saturday) hold a social responsibility day at Regina Coeli Mission in Nyanga. Doctors from all over Manicaland will converge at the hospital and offer free treatment and medical advice to people of Nyanga starting from 10am. There will be specialists in the group who will deal with even the most difficult medical conditions.
Zima Manicaland secretary-general Dr Tendai Zuze said: “As ZIMA, we appreciate the need for medical services in the rural areas and we also appreciate how financial hardships have forced many to go for months without treatment. We therefore appeal to the people of Nyanga to take advantage of this opportunity and come in their numbers.”
The outreach programme comes at a time Zimbabwe is basking in the glory of breaking new ground in its medical history by successfully performing the first major operation on Siamese twins born in April, with a team of 50 having worked on the eight-hour delicate procedure at Harare Children’s Hospital.
Born on April 22 this year to a Murehwa couple, the twin boys christened Kupakwashe and Tapiwanashe, were joined from the lower chest to the upper abdomen and shared a liver.
The most delicate part of the operation was on the liver, which had to be cut into two to ensure that both boys were left with something, although a liver can grow back if a part of it is removed.
President Mugabe last week paid tribute to the medical team and said they did the country proud and deserved to be honoured. Speaking after visiting the Murehwa twin boys at the hospital, President Mugabe also said Government was wholly Zanu-PF and he saw nothing that could stop it from implementing policies that were pro-people.
“I must say I am overwhelmed, so overwhelmed that I cannot express the sensitivity of it all,” he said.
President Mugabe said he could not believe the news when he heard that a team of entirely local doctors had successfully separated conjoined twins here in Zimbabwe despite the sanctions-induced challenges the health system was facing.
“I said what! We? Zimbabweans? We Zimbabweans struggling under the burden of sanctions, despised in circles of Europe, America – how could we ever have done that? Immense difficulties, vast, vast areas of challenges – where did these doctors really get their learning from?
“Did they really manage to do it? I didn’t believe it, but there it was, the truth of it and I said I must go see this mystery which has happened and see the people who have done it. So I came, I have seen and I am overwhelmed. I say to you congratulations. Congratulations the entire team,” he said.
