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Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe: Town's sole doctor shuts down clinic after farm eviction

CHIPINGE - The only doctor in Chipinge town in eastern Zimbabwe is leaving the farming town after she and her husband were evicted by the government from a nearby farm.

Petra Baum Gatner told ZimOnline she was this week forced to discharge sick patients and close down her Chipinge Trust Clinic because she had to leave the area after she and her husband, Robert Clowes, were evicted from Destiny Farm.

Fifteen workers, who had helped Gatner run the clinic for the last seven years, have also been left jobless.

"Someone nearly died of severe asthmatic attack yesterday and I was forced to send him home because I have to leave," Gatner said.

She said antenatal patients, who had depended on her services would now have to travel far to find help as there was no other doctor in Chipinge, a town of more than 30 000 people located about 400 km east of Harare.

"They will not find this help in Chipinge as I am the only doctor who has been regularly attending to them in this area ....its bad," said Gatner.

There is a government hospital in Chipinge but there is no resident doctor at the hospital, with patients requiring special attention being referred to Mutare General Hospital, more than 150 km away.

Gatner said she had attempted to seek audience with Health Minister David Parirenyatwa in a bid to save her clinic from closure but to no avail. Parirenyatwa could not be reached for comment on the matter.

There have been fresh evictions in the last three weeks of the remaining few white farmers in Manicaland province, where Chipinge is located.

State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa, who is also in charge of land redistribution, has said the government will step up eviction of the remaining white farmers to ensure all farmland was in the hands of blacks by the start of the next rainy season around November. - ZimOnline