THE World Health Organisation (WHO) donated a consignment of equipment for Zimbabwe’s Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) response.
By Kudakwashe Pembere
The consignment consisted of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and a state of the art Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) machine.
This equipment comes to augment WHO’s Testing Kits, PPEs and technical assistance they provided in this fight against COVID-19.
With the PPE costing USD16 527, the PCR Machine fetched USD24 436 adding to a total of USD40 963.
The equipment comes amid cries from the healthworkers who said they did not have adequate provisions thereof.
“I want to thank the United Nations for this very very generous and essential donation of PPEs.
“What we are talking about right now is the protection of our healthworkers. We do not want any of our healthworkers to end up being infected by COVID-19. So this comes in very handy in the fight of protecting our healthcare workers,” he said.
He added, “We really appreciate this gesture and we hope that you will continue supporting us as you have always done. So Zimbabwe welcomes this gift and I want to sincerely thank you on behalf of His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe who is leading us in this COVID-19 exercise. This preparedness makes it very relevant for us to be able to conquer the virus.”
With all eyes on nurses and other healthworkers in this COVID-19 response, Dr Moyo said, ” There is nothing as good as a soldier being well armed going to war. The ammunition which our healthworkers require is this very, very PPE.”
He also expressed gratitude for the PCR machine.
“And at the same time, the PCR machine that is extremely useful, for the process of us being able to come up with the coverage of the status of COVID-19 in our country. We are very grateful for this PCR machine for very definitive methods. If you’re positive, you are Positive, and if you are negative you are negative. We are very much appreciative of this technology which you have brought to us.
“Be assured that the items you have given us will be put to good use. They will not be found being misused. We shall make sure that our staff will be able to get those items for personal protection,” he said.
WHO Zimbabwe Representative Dr Alex Gasasira commended Zimbabwe’s efforts thus far in the COVID-19 Response.
“The transportation of the consignment to Zimbabwe was made possible by the collaboration, coordinated by the World Food Programme, the African Union, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the United Nations. So this effort has been dubbed the United Nations Solidarity Fund bringing essential medical equipment to Zimbabwe as well as other countries in Sub Saharan Africa.
“We are also delighted to hand over a PCR Machine that will boost the ongoing commendable efforts by the Government of Zimbabwe to expand testing to contain the spread of the virus,” he said mentioning they will continue supporting Zimbabwe through the coordination by UN Zimbabwe Resident Coordinator and Ambassador Miriam Ribeiro.
