UTH AT 60 DEPRESSING NOW
….more than ever before
By Amb. Anthony Mukwita
The University Teaching Hospital or UTH was once upon a time the marvel or envy of the Southern African region.
Today, however, it is but a shadow or shell of what it used to be when established in 1979 by Dr. Kenneth Kaunda, the founding father of the nation.
The shine is off, it is ever depressing to go there, once inside the structure, it feels as if you are in a cemetery.
You are greeted by cracking fading walls and floors and heavy stenches of dirt.
Today I reluctantly visited a close aunt of mine on the mend at the hospital thank God she is recuperating fast.
While there I strayed about and found myself in a totally different UTH on the same premises—the tale of two cities when you think of the pristine high-cost block and the poverty section.
This is below the wards called ´G Ward´ as you proceed to the Oxygen plant.
The first impression you get when you see what is happening on the ground floor below G Ward is a pathetic, miserable undesignated refugee camp scenario.
Tired and ill women and men that have come to tend to their sick relatives, eat, drink and shelter here on cardboard boxes, unable to return to their homes for one reason or another. UTH is now home.
Personal belongings are strewn all over the place and ´survival of the fittest´ reigns supreme here as disease and death lurks in the air.
It’s a mini-Gaza here at UTH just without the bombs, guns and Israeli snipers. There´s no safe place on the ground at 60.
My heart bleeds as I walk around looking into the empty and hopeless eyes of these good people that live in this ´sub city´ tending to their ill relatives.
I think to myself, today is Zambia´s 60th independence anniversary; why are our citizens in Africa´s second largest copper producer living in abject poverty and squalor, sleeping on cardboard boxes.
I reminisce more; where is the fourth estate of Zambia while these award-winning stories grow cold trail?
I also think, where is the government to correct this stupendous and spectacular poverty right in the heart of the city, this falls under ´public good´ responsibility not a luxury?
But then I say to myself; maybe the government is too busy celebrating Zambia at 60 to witness this crippling criminal poverty and abhorring disease conditions at Zambia´s largest hospital erected in 1979.