By Judith Sibanda
A hailstorm hit parts of Binga South district on Tuesday afternoon and left a trail of destruction at Siabuwa Rural District Hospital.
Binga district medical officer Simbarashe Manjengwa confirmed the incident adding that the waiting mother’s shelters and other wards were affected.
“According to the report that I received this evening, the storm happened approximately around 1 PM where waiting mother’s shelters were completely destroyed by the raging winds together with the admission wards and staff quarters,” Manjengwa said.
“Right now, our nurses have no shelter and their personal belongings were destroyed following the hailstorm.”
Manjengwa said a team of assessors will be dispatched today to evaluate the extent of the damage.
“We will be sending some teams tomorrow morning (today) to do the damage assessment, but there was no report of any admitted patients, waiting mothers or our nursing staff being injured. We will then establish how many patients were there and how they managed to escape.”
In February last year, flash floods destroyed 215 households and displaced 967 individuals, 58 percent of them being children after the confluence of Simbwambwa, Sikande, Namapande and Manyenyengwa rivers flooded.
To date, according to the Civil Protection Unit director Nathan Nkomo, the government is yet to provide all the affected families with decent accommodation.
