… as construction of Maseru Medical Hospital nears completion
Mathatisi Sebusi
LESOTHO and the People’s Republic of China have entered into a ground breaking agreement in which Maseru District Hospital and Eye Clinic will be capacitated to provide specialised medical services that Basotho are currently only accessing in South Africa.
The cooperation agreement will be anchored by Maseru District Hospital, now nearing completion, and the Wuhan Hospital of Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, also known as Wuhan No.1 Hospital. That facility integrates traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicines.
The deal will primarily benefit Lesotho which lacks capacity and human resource expertise for complicated medical procedures.
The cooperation arrangement was announced this week during a tour of the Maseru District Hospital construction site by Minister of Health, Selibe Mochoboroane, and a Chinese medical team. China is bankrolling the construction of the hospital, at a cost of nearly M1 billion, as part of its bilateral cooperation with Lesotho. This has seen the Asian country pour billions of maloti into Lesotho over many years.
Mr Mochoboroane said the partnership would help Maseru District Hospital offer specialised medical services which were currently not available in the country like heart surgery and chemotherapy.
“Basotho should expect that once the hospital is completed, they will no longer need to travel to South Africa for medical procedures as they will be offered in the country,” Mr Mochoboroane told the Lesotho Times at the hospital’s construction site.
Lesotho medical institutions currently refer patients to neighbouring South Africa for complex medical procedures.
Mr Mochoboroane said once the hospital was complete and operational, the Chinese government would deploy doctors and other medical experts to Lesotho to perform complex operations.
He said the Maseru District Hospital would also offer telemedicine services whereby a medical specialist will attend to patients while in China.
His ministry was already in talks with the Ministry of Information, Communications, Science, Technology, and Innovation to explore how the country’s internet network “can be strengthened to enable the telemedicine services”.
“This means that a medical specialist from China will not necessarily have to come to Lesotho to offer medical services, but he can do it from China working with our medical team here in Lesotho,” Mr Mochoboroane said.
The health minister also said that his ministry would have exchange programs through which doctors and nurses from Lesotho will be send to China for expert training.
Under similar exchange programs, China will also deploy its own medical teams to Lesotho.
Construction of the Maseru District Hospital commenced in April 2021 and is scheduled to be completed in March 2024.
“The hospital will be one of those hospitals offering specialised medical services. We currently have two hospitals which work as regional hospitals, Mafeteng hospital in the Southern region and Motebang Hospital in the Northern region. Maseru District Hospital will be the central region’s primary medical facility,” Mr Mochoboroane said.
China’s Deputy Commissioner at the Health Bureau of Disease Prevention and Control in Hubei Province, Liu Dongru, told the Lesotho Times: “The two sides will cooperate in various forms such as experience sharing, remote consultation, academic exchanges, personnel training and specialty development and carry out multi-channel and all-round cooperation in medical treatment, education, research and prevention, so as to further enhance the comprehensive capacity of the Maseru District Hospital.”
“We will strive to make the cooperation between China and Lesotho’s paired hospitals a model of the cooperation between China and Lesotho, as well as a model of the cooperation mechanism between paired hospitals of China and Africa, therefore contributing to the “Belt and Road” initiative and the building of a China-Africa health community.”
The two countries would also carry out multi-channel and all-round cooperation in medical treatments, education, research and prevention to further enhance the comprehensive capacity of Maseru District hospital
Dr Dongru also said that since 1997, China had dispatched a total of 184 medical experts to Lesotho in 17 batches.
Currently, nine members of the 17th batch of the Chinese Medical Team to Lesotho, were working locally, with specialities covering obstetrics and gynaecology, internal medicine, general surgery, orthopaedics, acupuncture, anaesthesiology and radiology.
Dr Dongru said over the past 26 years, the Chinese Medical Team to Lesotho had treated more than 200,000 patients, delivered more than 10,000 newborns, diagnosed and treated a large number of common and frequently occurring diseases.
China had also helped combat many difficult diseases including performing operations such as hip replacement, correction of congenital horseshoe foot, anastomosis of the brachial aorta, and resection of huge ovarian tumours.
Dr Dongru said a series of new techniques had been carried out by the medical team, such as modified radical mastectomy, tension-free inguinal hernia repair using patch, and ultrasus-guided iliofascial block anaesthesia.
“Many severe patients suffering hemopneumothorax, haemorrhagic shock, pericardial tamponade and other critical cases had been helped,” Dr Dongru said.
“The Chinese Medical Team also made use of weekends and holidays to go into the remote mountainous areas and schools in Lesotho for rounds of medical visits and free medical treatments.”
