DURING President Emerson Mnangangwa’s recent visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), he met various Zimbabwean business people and experts working in various fields who expressed eagerness and zeal to invest back home. Amongst those he interacted with was one, Dr Allan Nhapi, an Australian based Zimbabwean Doctor, who made a moving plea to the head of state to at least be allocated land to build a world class health facility in the country.
By Michael Gwarisa
To honor his wish, the government of Zimbabwe has since set aside a piece of land in the resort town of Victoria Falls for the construction of the state of the art hospital. The facility will amongst other things take off the huge patients burden saddling some of the country’s Central Hospitals where they have to accommodate and attend to patients from across the country.
Maybe before delving into the gist of the article, it is critical to briefly give Dr Nhapi;s background. Dr Nhapi was born in Zimbabwe at Harare Hospital now Sally Mugabe Central Hospital. He attended Nharira Government Primary School in Mbare before enrolling at Bernard Mizeki for his high school studies. He was trained as a medical doctor at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ). After UZ, he did his internship and worked briefly in government, before opening a Clinic in Queensdale. After some years, he moved to Botswana before leaving for Australia. He has worked in the Diaspora for nearly 20 years.
Dr Nhapi arrived in the country last night ahead of his scheduled visit to Victoria Falls where he will visit the site where the health facility will be built. To get a an insight into the envisaged project, The HealthTimes caught up with Dr Nhapi on his arrival last night at the Harare International Airport where he unpacked his vision, aspirations and dream to make Zimbabwe a middle income economy by the year 2030 through provision of world class healthcare services.
The Vision is born:
Before meeting President Mnangagwa in Dubai, Dr Nhapi said he has always had the dream to build a health facility in Zimbabwe and March 13, 2022 in Dubai just rubber stamped a sensation that has been burning inside him for a very long time.
Yes, there are plans to set-up a health facility in the country and this is because our country right now is geared or aiming at national development and there is no development if the people are sick. We need healthy people to be able to deliver development and to be able to deliver the milestones we want get to. The President has been talking about vision 2030. Vision 2030 will be accomplished by healthy strong boys, healthy strong young ladies and kids that are going to be healthy. That’s basically how we are going to develop our country and kids that are a healthy as well,” said Dr Nhapi.
He added that the COVID-19 had exposed the country’s health system and also shown the need to have world class health facilities and services that can withstand shocks such as the COVID-19 and other emergencies.
“The state of our health system needs improvement. There is so much room for improvement. We can make it better. We need to modernize it and we need to be on the world standards, so that is the plan. The plan is we need to beef up the central hospitals. We have got Parirenyatwa Hospital, we have got Harare Central Hospital, we have got Mpilo Central Hospital and we have got United Bulawayo Hospital UHB.
“The plan that is there if for Victoria Falls. When I had the opportunity to speak to the President last week, I just stood up and just said sir, this is what is in my heart and this is the dream that I have and I want to see this come to pass. After that, the President offered us land to build a Hospital in the Victoria Falls.”
Why Victoria Falls?
According to Dr Nhapi, Victoria Falls is the ideal location for this dream hospital.
“You know why I say Vic Falls? It’s because there is nothing like the Vic Falls in this world. The Vic Falls is the only place that is what it is. The Vic falls, central southern Africa is a world heritage listed site. It is one of the seven natural wonders of the world. The phenomenon of the Vitoria Falls itself. It is so magnificent that when Vic falls is completely and well-advertised, marketed and packaged, it will attract the whole world to this part of the world.
“We have Vic Falls that’s a God given Phenomenon. We should develop it. We have to develop the Victoria Falls. There is no body in this world that is 1807 meters wide and depths of 108 meters deep with a body of water that falls at the center 500 million litters in one minute. That’s our Victor falls. And it doesn’t end there. Even the way the Vic Falls responds. The Mist, the rainbow colors, the vegetation that comes because of the mists. You can actually see the Vic Falls mist 50 Kilometers away from the falls and in Zambia, you can see it 30 km away.”
Victoria Falls as the birth place for Medical Tourism In Zimbabwe:
Just like Dubai and India, Zimbabwe can emerge to become a medical tourism hub, the construction of a world class health facility in the resort town emerges as a low hanging fruit the Zimbabwean economy could tap into and turn around its fortunes.
“Now, the world is wanting to come to Vic Falls which is one of the reasons why I am particularly interested in the Victoria Falls. We have to have a world class health facility in the Vic Falls. The plan is to develop Victoria Falls as a medical tourism hub. How can we make the Victoria Falls work for our country? The way it is, if you have looked at it, it is in the center of Southern Africa. There is Zimbabwe there, there is Zambia, there is Namibia, there is Botswana and there is Angola. There is five countries that have access to the Vic Falls.
“Recently as of a few years back, they have done the Kaza Visa that is allowing people to come from Zambia, Botswana, South Africa and other countries under the facility for 30 days. You can multiple enter and you can just come in. Imagine we have a hospital there. So yes, we are looking at Medical Tourism. Medical tourism is when visitors or people, patients or users combine their trip. For example one can say okay, i have got a doctor’s appointment but you know what, I can just visit the falls or I don’t mind going to the Vic Falls when I am unwell because there are doctors there,” said Dr Nhapi.
What type of Hospital is the facility going to be?
Of late in Zimbabwe, there has been growing talk of Private Public Partnerships (PPPs) and the envisaged health facility to be built in the Victoria Falls answers to that call as it also seeks to address the issue of catastrophic healthcare costs patients encounter in their quest to access health services at the same time, offering quality healthcare services.
“We have to balance this hospital. They are talking about PPPs now and there will be a section like that because it must be affordable because it must be a place where people can come and are free to go. It also must be a referral center where other hospitals, clinics and district hospitals can refer. It will have a subsidized wing or a subsidized area or section where everybody can come. The hospital will also have an area or a section of this facility that will be private and charge world standard kind of fees so that they feed into each other.
“This is the dream we have, it is to put a specialist hospital with up to about 14 specialties that cover across internal medicine, general medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, women’s health, pediatrics, cardiology among others. So yes, this will be a specialist hospital. One of the reasons why we need to do this is to ensure we don’t have people living the country to access these specialist services elsewhere. When Zimbabweans go to India, do you know who is treating them? It’s our people. We have talent, we need to harness this. It is high time as a nation, we bring this talent back home.”
Tele-Health and Video Conferencing Services:
The world has become smaller and the global village concept is now a lived reality. The facility in Victoria Falls will provide room for Zimbabwean doctors residing and working in other parts of the world to offer services through video conferencing or Tele-health Facilities.
Timelines:
“Hospitals take time to put together. At this particular moment I don’t have time-frames. We were given the land on Sunday last week and its only been seven days now and that is why I am here now specifically for that so that we can start the process. When we get to the land we will know exactly what the processes are going to be like.
“There are so many stakeholders that are there. There is Ministry of lands, ministry of tourism, local government, there is all these ministries and stakeholders that are involved in putting up a structure like this. We have to go through all these compliance and regulatory frameworks and we have got to do all these things. So i am not in position to give time-frames at the moment but I will be happy to give them as soon as I get them.”
Envisaged Cost:
Even though Dr Nhapi could not give specific detail regarding the envisaged costs and channels of funding for the construction of the hospital as yet, he said, “We are going to divide funding into two sections. Investor funds, those that have got financial interests in the project, they will be given their chance to engrave their names into this history. Another section will be us Zimbabweans, each one of us will get a chance to put a brick in there in one way or another.
“What I really want to say no is that Zimbabweans, we can build. I have been in Dubai for the past four months. They built that place from scratch. This place has got more to give the world that Dubai can give the world and we can do more here.”
The Future:
Building or constructing a hospital of this magnitude is not a walk in the park and according to Dr Nhapi, for this project to be successful, it has to be all hands on deck and it cant be business as usual.
“We are going to need four things that we need as a nation to do. The first one is Faith. We have got to have faith tat what we want to do we can do do it because you can never build what you don’t see in you. We also need to have focus. We need people that come on board that are focused, whose entire goal and whose entire mission is to build. We need people that are disciplined. Disciplined with resources, disciplined with pei9plle and with time. We also need people that have got a selfless devotion to this kind of project. These four things are what we need, that’s our war cry.”
Now that the land has been allocated, let the real work begin. All bottlenecks and red tapes should be dealt with in order for a project such as this one to come to fruition.
