TO refurbish the Cancer Diseases Hospital, government says the facility will be completely closed down for about four to six months and that all cancer patients will be referred to Tanzania at its cost. Preliminary estimates are that each patient will need about $4,500 for their air ticket, meals, accommodation and treatment.

Health Minister Sylvia Masebo “Regarding the issue of patients at the Cancer Diseases Hospital, I’m glad to inform the House that the government, through the Ministry of Health and in particular the Cancer Diseases Hospital has engaged the Tanzanian government through the Cancer Centre in Tanzania as we prepare for the complete replacement of the equipment. To this effect, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the cancer disease centre of Zambia and that of Tanzania where it has been agreed that at the point where we start the replacement of the old machine, the hospital will have to be closed for a period of four to six months. It is at this period when the hospital will be closed that the machines will be removed and the infrastructure will have to be rehabilitated, taking into account the new machines that will replace the old machines. Once the machines are brought in and the hospital becomes operational, that is the time the patients will be removed from Tanzania back into our hospital.

The cost of referring patients to Tanzania as I indicated is a matter that is being negotiated and there is an MoU. An MoU simply means we have agreed but we have not finalised. What comes out of an MoU is an actual contract that will give you now that real figures. Now, that is a procurement matter but off the cuff, I can state that the amount will be around $4,500 per patient and this will cover the cost of transportation to Tanzania, the cost of accommodation for the patient, meals and for a six to seven weeks costs of radiotherapy. So, that will cost around $4,500. But as I indicated, the finality will come out of a signed contract”.

Firstly, I think government deserves commendation for making this very hard and costly decision and also, being transparent about it. Elsewhere, other governments would say “we will close only one half of the hospital” knowing too well that this is not possible but just as a way of keeping the public calm. Or they can refer cancer patients to some facility which doesn’t have the capacity to handle their conditions as a way of buying time. Worse still, some governments can choose to be mute about the realities obtaining on the ground and intimidate anyone who dares to cough up the true picture. But that is not what the UPND government has done. The new dawn government has opted to be transparent about the fact that CDH equipment is now obsolete and has gone a step further to budget for the cost of referring all patients to Tanzania.

But what does this entail for the loved ones of these patients? Because some of the patients have bed-siders who tend to their every need; will they also be financed by government to travel? These relatives and friends of the patients are very necessary in one’s healing journey, I can imagine that going through chemo and radiation without a loved one to hold your hand can make the experience much harder than it already is. For CDH, it is easy for people to go and visit but that is not the case when patients are taken to Tanzania for such a long period of time. Has this been looked at?

And there has to be a fall-back plan in terms of diagnosis because diseases don’t wait for governments to be ready for them, especially cancer. There’s need for constant screening, so do the other facilities like the University Teaching Hospital and Levy Mwanawasa Teaching Hospital have capacity to diagnose a wide range of cancers? And some cases will be found at stages which need immediate intervention, what happens to those? Is there an adequate budget to also refer them to Tanzania? Because what we have been told so far is that government is budgeting for patients who are already at CDH, and we believe it is over 900 patients who are in need of radiation. By the time this exercise is starting, we are likely to have more cases; what is the plan for those that are not already patients at CDH? Where will they be taken?

Lastly, one can only hope that there’s some long-term planning with regards to the lifespan of the new equipment. There’s a famous saying that failing to plan is actually planning to fail. As a country, we failed to plan for the longevity of CDH. When everyone was praising us for having such a state-of-the-art facility which even attracted patients from neighbouring countries, it is as though we thought the status quo would be maintained by magic. The equipment which is there now was installed in 2006, 2010 and 2014 and needed to be replaced in 2016 and 2019, but no one planned for that and here we are. It is actually very embarrassing that we are in this position, from being a shining example of how it should be done to being a perfect illustration of total failure. We can do better.