Founded in 1923, Howard Hospital is a Salvation Army facility situated in the Chiweshe communal land of Zimbabwe. Eighty kilometers north of the capital of Harare, the hospital is the referral centre for the Mazowe district of Mashonaland Central Province and has a catchment of greater than 250,000 people.
A variety of services are provided for all ages, from newborn to the elderly and terminally ill. There are in-patient and out-patient departments treating 75,000 patients a year, an operating theatre, pharmacy, laboratory, and facilities for x-ray, ultrasound and rehabilitation. The mobile clinic reaches the community, to villages as far as 100 kilometres from the hospital, providing an immunization program, pediatric and obstetric care, and family planning.
The nurses’ training school offers education for a new cadre of primary care. Likewise, there is a school for midwifery training, providing both upgrading and complete training in the practice of midwifery.
In the department of obstetrics, also known as Family Child Health (FCH), there are over 2000 deliveries each year. Within the hospital premises an ante-natal shelter offers accommodation to expectant mothers to prevent problems arising from delays in transportation. Efforts have been made in preventing the transmission of HIV from a mother to her infant, commonly referred to as Maternal to Child Transmission (MTCT). Howard Hospital also witnessed the introduction of the short courses of antiretrovirals such as AZT, and nevirapine to decrease transmission of HIV infection from mother to infant.
A home care program has been established for chronic and palliative care, including patients with AIDS-related diseases, under the supervision of our chaplains and nurses. A supplemental feeding program provides for children with malnutrition. Child sponsorship is available for orphans whose parents have died from AIDS and who could otherwise not afford to go to school. Support groups of people living with AIDS have sprung up in the villages. A comprehensive HIV counseling and treatment center has been launched in conjunction with expanded efforts to diagnose and manage tuberculosis and the opening of the new Howard Hospital. 200 people living with HIV are receiving antiretroviral therapy, expanding to 400 in 2005.
The expectant mother, the sick, the dying and their healthy relatives and friends are exposed to the benefits of AIDS awareness and education at Howard Hospital. Counseling and spiritual care is provided with support from the local Salvation Army church. There is an education team that reaches the schools, churches and community centres with the message of AIDS prevention using the means of song, art and puppetry. Peer educator youth clubs have been established. The goal is that individuals will take note, and adopt healthy, life-preserving behaviour – one by one.
Prevention, treatment and care, and a message of hope…this is the message that can be delivered to the patients, their families and the community. The provision of quality medical services with social and spiritual support should have a positive impact on lives of the rural population, and ultimately produce a healthy productive Zimbabwean society.
Dr. Paul Thistle has been serving at The Salvation Army’s Hoard Hospital since 1995 and has been the Chief Medical Officer since 1999. Dr. Thistle is from Scarborough and received his medical degree from the University of Toronto in 1989.
His clinical and research interests include prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV, AIDS prevention and treatment, cervical cancer screening and long-term methods of family planning.
Paul is a member of The Salvation Army and is married to Pedrinah, a Zimbabwean born nurse/midwife. They have two boys and are training to become Salvation Army officers while continuing their work in Zimbabwe.
