About the Hospital
St. Albert’s Mission Hospital opened in 1964 with 85 beds. It is located on the escarpment overlooking the Zambezi Valley in northern Zimbabwe near the Mozambique border. (Zimbabwe -- Google maps)
Originally, St Albert's was run by Dominican nun nurses. Elizabeth Tarira, MD, MPH, a Zimbabwean, was the hospital’s first resident doctor. She arrived in 1983 and gradually built up the hospital to
today's 140-bed capacity. Elizabeth became the hospital’s director in 1999. She is also District Medical Officer for the region and oversees the operation of ten outlying village clinics.
St Albert's became a district hospital in 1985. As a district hospital, the government is supposed to pay the salaries of the staff, provide drugs and pay a part of the hospital's running costs. The Diocese
of Chinhoyi also contributes to the capital costs of buildings, equipment and major repairs. The hospital must itself cover any shortfalls.
The shortfalls are enormous, due to the severe economic condition of the nation – inflation has reached 3,600% and rising; unemployment is 80% – the amount of money and supplies that the government and the diocese contribute has steadily fallen, and the hospital is struggling.
Elizabeth is assisted at St. Albert’s by Neela Naha, MD, an Indian obstetrician, and Zimbabwean Julia Musariri, MD, a general practice physician trained in HIV care. A Zimbabwean woman, Melania Mayamakuwa, directs the hospital’s voluntary counseling and testing program and its home-based care program.
Facts about St. Albert’s Mission Hospital:
- It serves a 3,000 sq km (1,800 sq mi) area, with a population in 2006 of 120,000. It resides on the edge of the Zambezi escarpment, and serves people in the surrounding villages and those living below in the poorer, dryer, malaria-ridden Zambezi Valley. Both areas continue to grow as people migrate from cities to the rural areas because of Zimbabwe's declining economy.
- The hospital includes a rehabilitation unit; male, female and children's wards; a maternity unit; neonatal unit; small staff ward; a septic and aseptic surgical theater; outpatient care area; biochemistry and microbiology laboratories, a pharmacy, kitchen, Voluntary Counseling and Testing Center (VCT) and home-based care program.
- Each year, St. Albert’s admits about 5,000 patients, treats about 40,000 outpatients and delivers about 2,600 babies.
- The hospital’s HIV/AIDS program provides antiretroviral drugs to 300 adults and 12 children to treat AIDS. But the need is far greater, and Elizabeth is working to expand the program.
- The hospital provides antiretroviral drugs to pregnant HIV-infected women to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the AIDS virus to the baby. St. Albert’s was the first rural hospital in Zimbabwe to offer a program for pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Data gathered during the pilot program showed that such programs are feasible in the nation’s rural areas.
- St. Albert’s HIV mother-to-child-prevention program was launched in March 2001. Beginning in 2005, all pregnant women have been tested for HIV infection. The hospital’s HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs have several sources of support: the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) (see http://www.cafod.org.uk/where_we_work/africa/zimbabwe) ); the government of Zimbabwe; the Italian Association for World Development; the European Union; and the Luisa Giodotti Missionary Group.
- The hospital began its innovative home-based care program in 1991 to help families care for loved ones with disabilities and chronic illnesses including AIDS, cancer, hypertension, asthma, and disabilities. It trains community volunteers who visit the sick and advise families in their care. When the hospital’s care team arrives in the village, the volunteer tells them which families most need a visit. These home visits have dwindled from weekly to monthly or every few months because of fuel shortages and ever-rising costs.
- The home-based care program pays the school fees for hundreds of orphans and tries to provide seed and fertilizer to the neediest grandmothers caring for them.
- St. Albert’s has limited technology available. It includes basic hematology, chemistry and some microbiology. Thanks to donor companies in Germany, St. Albert’s has one of only two working CD4-cell counters in all of Zimbabwe. The same company provided an ultrasound and autoclaves, although reagents and equipment maintenance remain a challenge. Such financial support and equipment donations are a testament to the good work that Elizabeth and the other doctors are doing at St. Albert’s.
Zimbabwe’s economy began collapsing in 2000. Shortages of fuel, electricity, water, and basic drugs and equipment remain a daily struggle.
Yet, in spite of steadily worsening conditions, Elizabeth keeps the hospital running and even growing. In 2000, she started a farm project to grow maize and other crops on 100 hectares (247 acres) of donated land. Crops include maize, groundnuts (peanuts), potatoes, green vegetables, carrots, beans and tomatoes. The project provides food for hospital patients, and surplus is sold to pay the farm workers. In 2004, when drought dried up the hospital’s wells and threatened to close the hospital, she dammed a seasonal stream and produced a reservoir. Unfortunately, Zimbabwe’s rapidly rising inflation rate has stymied the last phase of this project, installing a water purification system. In Jan. 2006, Elizabeth began a nurses training program that will aid the hospital and help relieve Zimbabwe’s nursing shortage.
Elizabeth, Neela, Julia and Melania and the people they serve depend heavily on friends outside the country. They need, and deserve, our help.
