Zimbabwe’s underfunded health system collapses
HARARE, Zimbabwe — A doctors’ strike in Zimbabwe has crippled a health system that was already in intensive care from neglect. It mirrors the state of affairs in a country that was full of promise a year ago with the departure of longtime leader Robert Mugabe but now faces economic collapse.
Doctors describe grim conditions: Barehanded surgeries. Plastic bread bags used to collect patients’ urine. Broken-down machines. Zimbabwe’s health sector, once considered one of the best in Africa, is on its knees.
“It’s so sad. The hospitals are empty, the patients are being turned away to die somewhere else,” said Prince Butau, treasurer of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association, which represents about 1,000 doctors who anchor government hospitals.
A new president’s promises of change have turned out to be empty.
“Affordable quality health care guaranteed,” read campaign billboards for President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former Mugabe protege, ahead of the July 2018 election. Six months after he narrowly won the disputed vote, Zimbabwe’s health sector has widespread shortages of basic medicines such as painkillers and contraceptives.
Everyday Zimbabweans seeking health care have had to bring their own drugs, syringes, bandages and, at times, water.
Government hospitals were paralyzed by the five-week doctors’ strike that “begrudgingly” sputtered to an end on Thursday with no resolution for their demands. The end brings no improvement in conditions.
In November, the Zimbabwe Medical Association, which represents health workers, warned that patients were “relapsing” and “deteriorating” while operations were being cancelled due to shortages of medicines.
The situation, coupled with low salaries, forced doctors to strike, Butau said.
One of the striking doctors, Wallace Hlambelo, described using everyday plastic bags with catheters for some elderly patients. “What we were doing was not to treat patients. Patients feel you have done something but you would have done nothing. That’s not medicine,” he said.
Zimbabwe’s finance minister has allocated $694 million for the health sector in 2019 against an annual need of $1.3 billion. To return the sector to its former glory days, the health ministry said it needs about $8 billion, which is the entire government budget for 2019.