Matero Hospital Completed, to treat over 200,000 people per year

MATERO is famously known as the “City within a City” boasting of numerous infrastructure that includes the gigantic Heroes stadium, the Olympic Youth Development Centre (OYDC) and the heavy industrial area which is home to Zambian Breweries and other major manufacturing industries.

Matero constituency has a population of over 300, 000 from five wards (Muchinga, Lima, Mwembeshi, Kapwepwe and Matero) with over 170, 000 people having registered to vote in this years’ election.

One of the major campaign promises by leading political parties in this years’ election is centred on quality and easily accessible healthcare services.

Matero constituency has three major health centres, Matero main clinic, George clinic and Matero Referral which have been catering for the ever growing population of Matero and have since proved to be inadequate to offer quality health care services.

In order to cater for this ever growing population and that of surrounding areas, the Government in 2014 embarked on the construction of the Matero and Chilenje Level 1 hospitals which have since been completed and awaiting commissioning.

The two projects were embarked on through a Japanese grant of approximately K120 million.

The two projects were launched in June 2014 at Matero Referal clinic by Health Minister Dr Joseph Kasonde.

With a population of over two million people in Lusaka, the only tertiary hospitals are University Teaching Hospital (UTH) and Levy Mwanawasa Second Level hospital.

According to Ministry of Health spokesperson Kamoto Mbewe, one of the major challenges in the delivery of healthcare services in Lusaka has been the inadequacy of primary and secondary health facilities.

“The health sector in Zambia has a pyramid based structure, with the provision of basic health services in lower health facilities i.e health posts and health centres, covering a limited geographical area, supported by the first, second and third level referal hospitals, through established referal system,” Dr Mbewe explained.

He added that Lusaka district currently lacks such a pyramid based referal structure and in most instances, patients that are supposed to be attended to at a level one hospital are directly referred to a level three hospital, thereby compromising the continuum of care.
It is the realization of this problem that Government has upgraded the above health centres into first level hospitals.