Thorngrove Hospital Laboratory

Organisation / Structure

Offers / Events

In November 2012, Bulawayo City Council (BCC) adopted plans to convert Thorngrove Hospital into a laboratory, in a project to cost $100 000, bankrolled by an unnamed donor.

The BCC Health department laboratory at Khami Road Clinic was too small and crowded, so two old buildings at Thorngrove Hospital that could be renovated were identified, said Zanele Hwalima, council’s director of health services. ^[1]

In April 2020, the government announced it was shutting down Thorngrove Hospital for renovations in preparation for any COVID-19 cases. The President announced a 21-day lockdown that began 31 March, and was extended. When the lockdown was announced, Zimbabwe only had one coronavirus testing center located in Harare. Another testing center opened 12 April in Bulawayo at the government-run Mpilo Central Hospital's National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory.

In 2012, St. Francis Hospital in Columbus, Georgia, formed what it called "a sister hospital relationship" with Mater Dei as part of efforts to assist the Bulawayo health institution with equipment and training of medical personnel, among other things. As the efforts to assist the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood and Mater Dei Hospital to deal with COVID-19 cases continues, fundraisers say they have noted the extensive work being done by the Catholic Church. ^[2]

In April 2020, the City of Bulawayo was working on equipping its laboratory at Thorngrove Infectious Diseases Hospital so it can start testing for coronavirus (COVID-19). “As the City of Bulawayo right now, we are not yet doing testing ourselves and this issue is quite a limiting factor at the present moment,” acknowledged Assistant Director of Health Services, Dr Khulamuzi Nyathi. He confirmed Zimbabwe’s second-largest city was not testing for coronavirus, as it was “a new disease, whose test kits take some time to develop and even to capacitate the laboratory to actually test.” ^[3]

Further Reading