FAU Chitungwiza Chapter

Overview of the Chitungwiza Central Hospital

Chitungwiza is a satellite town lying 30km east of the capital city, Harare. Chitungwiza Central Hospital, established in 1984, currently services Chitungwiza Town and the surrounding Mashonaland East District Areas. Due to the growth in the population of Chitungwiza itself and the surrounding areas, the current capacity of 500 beds has become grossly insufficient to adequately service the population.

Chitungwiza Central Hospital has identified the need to upgrade the facilities to meet the current and growing medical needs of the urban town, surrounding areas and Zimbabweans as a whole.

The development will benefit Chitungwiza Central Hospital as its reputation will flourish due to its association with internationally reputable medical organizations. The new hospital will usher in a world class specialist service within Zimbabwe as it will have super specialist departments for example cancer, cardiology and kidney transplantation. This will assist Zimbabwean patients by not having to make costly trips abroad to access services found in international hospitals across the world as these services will be available locally.

The new hospital will create a teaching environment for undergraduate and postgraduate health care students. The proposed new hospital will create new job opportunities for the local health professionals and administrators. The socially disadvantaged patients will be able to access world class health care service delivery in the same way and same environment the rich and affluent will receive whilst in private hospitals.

Previous Design Brief of the Chitungwiza Central Hospital

A construction team for the design, implementation and supervision of the new hospital has been created. The new Chitungwiza Central Hospital will be adjacent to the existing hospital. The hospital will cater for 1200 in-patient beds. The total floor area of the new hospital will be 130 938m2. Of the total floor area 85 066m2 will be for the treatment and out-patient areas and the remaining 45 872m2 will be dedicated to the nursing areas for in-patients.

The design employs the ‘Brietfuss’ model of hospital design. This is comprised of a tall tower block with nursing functions placed above a podium with treatment and outpatient functions. The structure of the building shows a clear vertical division between the static nursing units in the tower and the dynamic departments on the podium.

FAU Zimbabwe Partners AEC Hospital Partner work