The Ministry of Health and Child Care held a guided tour at Mahusekwa District Hospital, Mashonaland East Province recently, as part of the 5-day media training exercise on outbreaks and immunisation that was held at Ochi Safaris.
Mahusekwa District Hospital is helping in the fight against measles and all antigens. The hospital had been targeting to vaccinate 25 children per month, but the number has since rose to 100. As a response to the measles outbreak, the health facility was targeting to vaccinate 30 373 children and to date 25 984 children have been vaccinated against the child killer disease. However, the exercise is marred by resistance from other religious sectors.
In a statement during the tour the District Medical Officer (DMO), Dr. Delight Madoro said outreach campaigns were being conducted in a bid to cover the hard-to-reach areas, and also the hospital has a Rapid Response Team (RRT) to counter outbreaks in the area.
The DMO congratulated the farming community who were helping saying that, farmers were supportive and were working hand in hand with the hospital in mobilising their workers to get their children vaccinated.
Dr. Madoro noted that they carry out supplementary immunisation activities as part of the immunisation programme which is mainly done when there is an outbreak similar to that of measles.
“The other thing that we do in the immunisation programme is that we carry out what we call supplementary immunisation activities in the event that we have an outbreak,” said Dr. Madoro.
Dr. Madoro reported that they did not have any measles cases in the past weeks an indication that the situation was under control.
“At most, we have not had any cases in the past weeks as the situation is getting handled,” said Dr. Madoro.
The DMO urged parents to get their children vaccinated citing that vaccines were delivered daily at the vaccination points in order to curb the spreading of measles and other antigens.
On another note, Dr. Madoro informed journalists that the Ministry of Health and Child Care embarked on installing solar energy at health facilities which saw their station benefitting last year under the “Solar for Health”. The solar backup would help counter power cuts during the rainy season or load-shedding periods. The solar backup powers the fridges, theatres, wards and can run up to 24 hours in the event of a power cut.
