Senior medical officers at the Livingstone Teaching Hospital, the main government hospital for the tourist capital of Zambia has been accused of deliberately not repairing it’s X-ray machines and other vital equipment in order to divert patients to a private clinic which is charging exhorbitant fees.
The accusation is that the senior officers at the government hospital may be conniving with the private clinic and getting cuts from the exhorbitant fees. The concerned citizen complained that no efforts have been made to get the machines working and this is putting a further financial burden on patients.
And when contacted by ZBT, a senior medical officer at Livingstone Teaching Hospital who asked for their identity to be withheld denied the allegations regarding the X-ray machines being down in order to favor private entities operating outside the hospital.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with ZBT, the medical officer revealed and acknowledged that yes indeed the X-ray machines have been down for a while now but that the breakdown of the X-ray machine was due to them not being replaced for quite a number of years now .
“We don’t have an X-ray Machine as the one that we had stopped working for some years now, so ever since then, we have been working with a smaller X-ray machine,” the medical officer said.
The medical officer further disclosed that currently there are some installations which the ministry is currently doing in regards to having the machines replaced.
“What the Ministry of Health is doing is that they are having installations of new machines across the Country, so they have currently installed in the Northern province, Eastern province, this week they are installing on the Copperbelt and probably next week or so, they will install the machine in Livingstone,” the source disclosed.
At the time of going to press, ZBT is yet to get a response from the ministry of health head office on the allegations in Livingstone and the timelines when the machines will be replaced.
