Patience Nyagato
PARIRENYATWA Radiotherapy Centre is once again a hub of life-saving cancer care, offering chemotherapy, brachytherapy for gynaecological cancers, and external beam radiotherapy for various cancer types, bringing relief to patients from across the country.
Zimbabweans continue to gain access to life-saving cancer treatments at Zimbabwe’s largest referral hospital Parirenyatwa which currently can attend to up to 90 cancer patients a day.
“I came here very sick hardly able to walk. It was a hard time, but I was well received and getting treatment here at almost free charge. I am much better now thanks to Parirenyatwa hospital,” said a patient.
“I am so happy I can get treatment here. It’s expensive tondo it out there but Parirenyatwa give me relief. I come from Zvimba and getting treatment. I would advise anyone battling cancer to come here because you will get treated,” noted another.
Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals Head of Radiology, Dr Nothando Mutizira, said cervical cancer is the most common in Zimbabwe, making up over 30% of female cases, with prostate cancer second and breast cancer third.
“At Parirenyatwa radio therapy centre we are offering chemotherapy services brachytherapy for gynaecological cancers, and we are also offering external beam radiotherapy for many different cancers.
“The commonest cancer is cervical cancer, which is affecting most of our women more than 30 percent of Zimbabwean women diagnosed with cancer are found in the most common types of cancer to have cancer of the cervix we also have prostate cancer which has been on the rise for the last couple of years ranking at number two and then breast cancer ranking at number three out of all the cancers that we are seeing in the country.
“Our centre has three machines we also have two machines at Mpilo hospital but Parirenyatwa radiotherapy centre has three linear accelerators of those three linear accelerators two are currently working and those are the ones we are using to treat our patients at the moment we also have bracket therapy which is different from external beam radiotherapy and we have two bracket therapy units one of them is working at the moment,” said Dr Mutizira.
A dedicated team of 12 radiographers and three medical physicists is working tirelessly to clear the backlog of cancer patients at Parirenyatwa Radiotherapy Centre, after a challenging two-year period when equipment breakdowns halted services.
“We’ve had the challenge of a huge backlog because our machines were down for two years, as you know, and we’ve been trying to clear that backlog over the past year. We also have staff challenges; we currently have 12 radiographers who are the technicians who control the linear accelerators and are the ones who are responsible for putting the patients on the machine every day.
“So, we have those staff challenges. We also are currently treating about 90 patients a day, which is quite a huge number for that small number of radiographers.
‘‘We also have a challenge with the low number of radiation or rather medical physicists. So, we only have three medical physicists now.
“Again, this same number of physicists is responsible for dealing with this large volume of patients that we currently have. So those are some of the challenges we are experiencing. I will say previously, at our peak we would have numbers as high as almost 30 radiographers,” added the doctor.
Government is also moving to revive Mpilo Hospital radiotherapy services in Bulawayo to decentralise access to cancer treatment.
Authorities say efforts are underway to increase staffing and improve equipment availability, with hopes that more Zimbabweans will gain timely access to lifesaving cancer treatment. — ZBC
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