The Beit Bridge District Hospital is operating with only one ambulance at its disposal, a development that continues to affect the health delivery system in the district.

In an interview, the chief medical officer of the Beit Bridge Hospital, Dr Sydney Majangara, told Mirror that they were relying on one ambulance to service the district of about 12 000 people, adding that it prevented effective health service delivery in the district.

“We rely on one vehicle, which we use as our ambulance to ferry patients and to transport our staff. We also use the same vehicle to deliver food for our patients and therefore continues to impact negatively in terms of health service delivery,” he said.

Majangara said they were now appealing to the authorities to address the challenge. “Our worry is that Beit Bridge, by virtue of being the busiest border post in the country, also caters for the in-transit population. Hence we are appealing to government to provide us with more ambulances,” he said. The only ambulance is, however, unreliable as it constantly breaks down, largely due to the poor state of the roads in the district.

Majangara said they had recently reopened the local mortuary, following the completion of refurbishments. The facility was closed to the public at the height of the cholera outbreak in the border town in November last year, forcing locals to either take bodies of their loved ones to local private mortuaries, or across the border in neighbouring Musina. “We have reopened our mortuary, following the assistance we got from our partner, World Vision, who repaired the cooling system,” he said

The mortuary, designed to cater for only six bodies, was forced to accommodate as many as 60 bodies at times, mostly of unclaimed border jumpers found along the Limpopo River. The development resulted in the constant breaking down of the machinery.