Tour the Hospital
For most outside visitors, a trip to St. Albert’s begins in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. St. Albert’s is about 200 kms (120 mi) north of the city, on the edge of the Zambezi escarpment. (Zimbabwe -- Google maps) To reach St. Albert’s, one travels a two-lane highway from Harare to Mt. Darwin then a one-lane road for 36 km (22 mi). The last 2 km (1.2 mi) into the township is dirt road.
Patients come from the surrounding villages on the escarpment, the arid Zambezi Valley and neighboring Mozambique. The population continues to grow as people move from cities to rural areas because of Zimbabwe’s declining economy. In the countryside surrounding St. Albert’s, most people live by subsistence farming. Maize is the chief crop and the staple food, as in all of Zimbabwe. Housing ranges from contemporary multi-roomed homes to one-room cinderblock homes with tin roofs, to round or square huts of mud and thatch.
This sign greets those arriving at St. Albert’s. Written in Shona, Zimbabwe’s main endemic language, it carries the verse from Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Dr. Elizabeth Tarira, MD, MPH, (at left) is a Zimbabwean physician and surgeon, and director of St. Albert’s. She has worked at St. Albert’s since 1983 and was the hospital’s only doctor from 1983-86. She became director in 1999.
Dr. Elizabeth is assisted by Neela Naha, MD, (at right) an obstetrician originally from India, Julia Musariri, MD, a Zimbabwean physician who specializes in the treatment of HIV and AIDS patients, and Melania Myamukuwa, who heads the voluntary counseling and testing and home-based care programs.
All four women are members of the International Medical Association, a Catholic lay missionary organization based in Rome for women in medicine. They have taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The Association has run St. Albert’s for the government of Zimbabwe for many years.
The women’s ward, outside. St. Albert’s is a 140-bed hospital consisting of about a dozen buildings like this one connected by covered walkways. It also includes a rehabilitation unit, a male and a children’s ward, a maternity unit, neonatal unit, a small staff ward, a septic and an aseptic surgical theater, an out-patient care area, a pharmacy and kitchen, and a home-based care program.
The intensive care ward. The woman in foreground walked to St. Albert's from Mozambique. She was in obstructed labor. The mother survived, but the baby died. The obstructed labor caused a vaginal fistula, an opening between the vagina and the bladder that allows urine to drain from the vagina. It leaves young women incontinent and, often, social outcasts in their communities. Dr. Neela successfully repaired this woman’s fistula.
St. Albert’s operating room is simple but spotless. Equipment includes hand-operated suction devices for removing blood and fluids when electrical power is lost during surgery and before the hospital’s generator is turned on. Bottled oxygen is sometimes unavailable in Zimbabwe, so St. Albert’s, which at one time kept oxygen bottles in the wards, now reserves its oxygen for the operating room. (Photo by Tim Harris)
St. Albert’s diagnostic laboratory also has an instrument, donated by a German company, that counts the number of CD4 cells in a blood sample. CD4 cells are white blood cells that are destroyed by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The number of CD4 cells is an important measure of the health of an infected person’s immune system. St. Albert’s is one of only a very few hospitals in Zimbabwe to have a CD4-cell counter. However, the reagents needed for the test and the maintenance and repair of the instrument are expensive.
Mothers and children in St. Albert’s pediatric ward. (Photos by Thomas Taschbach)
Nurse Mutyambizi taking a mother’s blood pressure in the child vaccine clinic. Other mothers patiently wait their turn on the benches. Mothers are asked to bring their babies back monthly for 18 months for weighing. Vaccinations are given at three, four, five and nine months, with polio and DPT boosters at 5 years. Vitamin A injections are given every six months up to five years to prevent blindness.
Women who travel to the hospital with a problem pregnancy must often remain there until they deliver. These women stay at the Mother’s Shelter, located beside the hospital grounds. (Photo by Tim Harris)
The Mother’s Shelter consists of five rooms like this one. Each woman provides her own sleeping mat and blankets. The women haul their own water from a tap on the hospital grounds for cooking, washing and showering.
Mother’s Shelter kitchen. Women provide their own food, which can include chickens and goats for milk and meat, with and cook it over fires with wood they collect themselves. (Photo by Tim Harris)
In 2005, an administration building was built and furnished entirely with donations. It houses offices for Elizabeth and other administrators, a conference room, the Voluntary Counseling and Testing Center, and the Home-Based Care program.
Elizabeth Tarira, MD, MPH, director, St. Albert’s Mission Hospital
