It is unacceptable that desperate patients at the Cancer Diseases Hospital based at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) cannot be attended to because the radiation machine, a key unit in the treatment chain has broken down.
What makes the situation more alarming is that the Medical Linear Accelerator radiation machine has been limping and has now broken down for almost two weeks.
This has left patients stranded, unsure of their fate as the UTH is the only hospital in the country that undertakes radiation therapy.
That nothing was done earlier and that there is no standby facility for the hospital to fall back on shows incompetence at the highest level especially that the radiation machine has been on and off in the past.
Remedial measures could have been taken.
Government’s failure to ensure that hospitals operate at their optimal level with all diagnostic equipment as well as adequate stocks of drugs has led to a dysfunctional health sector even though the Ministry of Health receives a lion’s chunk of funding from the Treasury.
Yet, there is nothing to show for the huge resources poured into the ministry as hospitals operate with nonfunctional equipment and empty dispensaries.
The one thing that a patient is assured of getting at a health facility – clinic or hospital – is a prescription for one to buy the medicine elsewhere.
In the meantime, Health Minister Sylvia Masebo has been in perpetual denial mode, refusing to admit the serious lapses in the ministry most of which are self-inflicted.
In the case of the Cancer Hospital, we join the Zambia Medical Association (ZMA) in calling on the government through the Zambia Medicines and Medical Supplies Agency (ZAMMA) to urgently procure the radiation machine because many lives are at stake.
“It is a big worry for us, especially that patients have no opportunity to go and get treatment abroad. This is the only machine they can utilise for radiotherapy. Our only appeal to government is to make sure that the processes that are said to have been initiated to get the machine up running are expedited,” ZMA president Dr Crispin Moyo has said.
Dr Moyo said “The people need to have access to the machine in order to save lives. We know, we have been told that the procurement for this has already started but we want this to be expedited to ensure that we don’t disrupt treatment for cancer patients.”
As Dr Moyo says, these are some of the things the government needs to prioritise because they are critical to the health of the people. Only God knows how many people will survive in the absence of the radiation machine.
As for the provision of medicines, Government in its wisdom prefers to buy them from India and Egypt, bypassing local entities for political reasons.
And the people bearing the brunt of the dysfunctional health care delivery system are the poor, the most vulnerable in the nation.
The Ministry of Health ought to realise that its failures affect a large part of the population who cannot survive in the absence of an efficient health sector.
It must save the cancer patients.
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