It was with some trepidation I approached the Rusitu Mission Hospital. It had been a long bumpy ride over 30km of rough tracks from Chimanimani, on the eastern border of Zimbabwe. The area is lush and green but very mountainous, so cultivating the land is very difficult, and the tracks cut into the hillside are almost impassable at times.
Sister Ivy strode towards us purposefully and greeted us with smiles. She is the Matron in charge of the rural clinic serving a population of 12,000 of the most vulnerable people in Zimbabwe. This is a very isolated area with a high risk of malaria and one where hunger and poverty inevitably lead to many other health problems. Yet Sister Ivy approaches her huge task of keeping this community healthy with an abundant zeal of joy and great efficiency. We asked how many doctors there were at the clinic, to which the reply was a cheerful ‘Oh we did have one doctor, but he left 6 weeks ago, but I am very hopeful another will be sent very soon’. Sister Ivy and her team of 23 enthusiastic and skilled staff care for up to 78 patients at a time in the wards and around 3,000 outpatients every year.
The three midwives in the clinic deliver about 15 babies a month. The risk of death through complications in childbirth is high. There is no operating theatre, no doctor and little equipment here, so a complication during childbirth requires a 92 km ride to the closest referral hospital in the rickety ambulance that has an engine that constantly overheats. Sister Ivy describes the vehicle as ‘our most critical patient: imagine being in labour, in pain and frightened and not only do we have to drive you over the bumpy roads, but we have to stop every 20km to fill the radiator’.
But there are even more pressing concerns – the clinic has not had the money to buy food to feed the vulnerable patients in the sparse wards, and the staff themselves have struggled to come to work, as they were engaged in ways of looking for food for their families. The supply of the most basic drugs, like aspirin and antibiotics had dried up as well.
Fortunately since April, CAFOD’s partner Caritas Zimbabwe has been providing the clinic with enough food to give all the patients and staff, meals of Sadza, a maize porridge, fortified with soya to increase the protein consumption of the patients. Sister’s joy at showing us the piles of sadza meal in sacks was good to see. ‘Everybody is happy’, she beamed, ‘we had no money to buy food, or anything. Now we are so happy, we are so grateful.’ The nurses had been unable to come to work she explained, ‘but now they come to work happily, they really want to work again’. Her happiness was evident.
As well as food, CAFOD is ensuring the clinic now has a supply of basic drugs such as aspirin and antibiotics. There was great excitement as the delivery of drugs had arrived the day before, ‘come on I will show you’ said Sister, marching off at great speed to the pharmacy. I naively expected something closer to the pharmacies I know, but still, the small concrete room, lined with shelves was a great sight. A day or so before the shelves had been empty, now they were full.
CAFOD is also working with communities in the area on health awareness education something which Sister Ivy sees as crucial, to reduce the number of patients arriving at the clinic, which is struggling to cope. CAFOD, through its partner Caritas Zimbabwe is training local families to build pit latrines - very basic toilets, which ensure that sewerage is kept out of the streams running off the mountain, which are used for drinking in the villages lower down. The most isolated families, at the top of the mountain, are being trained first. This is the area where there are fewest latrines (only 99 of the 2,594 households in the area have a latrine), the families are the poorest, living on the poorest land, and the water is still clean at this point, and it is crucial to keep it so.
The women of the family were working hard in the sun making bricks. Mary was mixing the rich red clay soil in a pit with water from the gushing stream; she was mixing by treading the soil with
her bare feet, a hard job indeed. The clay was then poured expertly into a wooden mould and turned out onto the cleanly swept ground to dry in the sun. Meanwhile the men of the family were digging
the two metre deep pit, which would be lined with the bricks to make the latrine. Mary took a break from mixing the clay to tell us that they were really excited to be able to build themselves the latrine, and they were eager to get it finished – their neighbours had been sick with cholera, and they wanted to make sure their water stayed cleaned. Mary was also proud that other families were coming to watch them build their latrine, so they could learn the skills and do the same in other villages.
It was good to see that CAFOD is able to help those most in need in Zimbabwe, but there are many more that need CAFOD’s help. Please sponsor the Catholic Today/CAFOD Great North Run team so as to ensure Sister Ivy continues to be able to help her patients, and families like Mary’s can stay healthy.
