PRISCA MANYIWA-MASUKU
MIRROR REPORTER

REDCLIFF – The Ministry of Health and Child Care is set to take over Torwood Hospital which was established by ZISCO Steel Company to cater for its employees and the surrounding community.
Kwekwe District Medical Officer (DMO) Dr Nyasha Masunda during a tour of the hospital by Midlands Minister of State Owen Ncube on Tuesday.
The hospital is currently under Redcliff Municipality which purchased it from a private doctor who bought the facility from ZISCO.
Masunda said Government has already started giving outpatient services at the hospital and is awaiting for renovations to be completed for the hospital to be fully functional.
The renovations are expected to be completed by the end of the year and the hospital will have a 70 bed capacity.
“In August 2023 we received information that Government is planning to resuscitate this hospital so that communities in Torwood, Redcliff and Rutendo and other surrounding areas may receive secondary care services at this hospital.
“When ZISCO closed, it sold this hospital to a private doctor who did not manage to make it fully functional and the doctor sold it Redcliff Municipality so currently the ownership is with Municipality after purchasing it with devolution funds during the Covid-19 era. Plans are underway for the Municipality to handover the facility to the Ministry of Health,” said Dr Masunda.
The hospital’s resident doctor Stanley Tatenda Mukono said the facility records an average of 300 patients per month since it opened its outpatient services.
He said the community has high prevalence of hypertension diagnosis and the reopening of the hospital will help reduce cases of stroke which are also prevalent in the community.
“What I have noticed in this community is high prevalence of hypertension and now that we have this facility we will be able to manage, give services and prevent worse situations like stroke because we have realised that in this community there is high prevalence of stroke,” said Dr Mukono.