Gift Matshoba Konjana, Special Correspondent
The pandemic continues to ravage our cosmopolitan province (Mashonaland West), the most urbanised in Zimbabwe.
Mashonaland West is always an envy with towns like Kadoma, Chegutu, Norton, Chinhoyi, Karoi and Kariba. But that doesn’t go without challenges.
Most of these towns were brought about by mostly farming, mining and tourism activities in these towns.
They influenced the setting up of other service centres, called growth points too, to serve the farming and rural population.
Places like Mubayira, Ngezi, Sanyati, Murombedzi, Banker, Nyabira, Trelawney, Lionsden, Mhangura, Alaska, Magunje, Mola, Kazangarare all quickly come to mind.
These places, at peak beam with business, that too exerting pressure on the little or next to nothing in terms of infrastructure development.
Most of our towns are along the major highways, this posing a higher risk of infection if an infected person were to just get into one or two shops as they pass by these towns, making contact tracing useless.
The surge in reported cases is growing to alarming levels considering the state of our health facilities.
According to the ministry of health, national casualty figures have soured to 1 709 cases. Just yesterday there were 17 reported cases.
MashWest, which is the spotlight of this post, has all of its towns as hot-spots except Kadoma, Chegutu and Norton and their surrounding environs.
In Hurungwe, business centres such as Doro, Nyamangoma, Chidamoyo, Kazangarare, St Anne’s, continue to record highs.
The good news at least is that more and more vaccines continue to be available for the public. Their uptake is worrisome.
It seems we all need to have a major awareness on this and more. More and more calls continue to increase for an affirmative action to expedite the process. In this regard let me add a voice.
The DAC program, which was set up to deal with the AIDS pandemic seems to have set up a great network and funding too.
Why can’t we, take the resources to fund own vaccines?
