Report reveals sorry state of Zimbabwe's health service

Report reveals sorry state of Zimbabwe's health service

A DYING COUNTRY: A Zimbabwean man drives a pushcart with his sick relative from hospital where they could not find drugs on April 02, 2008

A DYING COUNTRY: A Zimbabwean man drives a pushcart with his sick relative. Doctors are warning this week that the majority of the country's ambulances are grounded

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By Angus Shaw

THE advice of doctors to Zimbabweans? Don’t get sick. If you do, don’t count on hospitals – they’re short of drugs and functioning equipment.

As the economy collapses, the laboratory at a main 1,000-bed hospital has virtually shut down. X-ray materials, injectable antibiotics and anticonvulsants have run out.

Emergency resuscitation equipment is out of action. Patients needing casts for broken bones need to bring their own plaster. In a country with one of the world’s worst AIDS epidemics, medical staff lack protective gloves.

Health authorities blame the drying up of foreign aid under Western sanctions imposed to end political and human rights abuses under President Robert Mugabe.

A power-sharing agreement aimed at bringing the opposition into the government could open the gates to foreign aid. But negotiations have stalled over how much power rests with Mugabe.

Jacob Kwaramba, an insurance clerk, brought his brother to Harare’s Parirenyatwa hospital, once the pride of health services in southern Africa.

Emergency room doctors sent Kwaramba to a private pharmacy to buy drugs for his brother’s lung infection. He returned two hours later to find his brother dead, he said in the emergency room.

“I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t a fatal illness,” he said.

Another family said a relative dying of cancer was sent home, and no painkillers could be found in Harare pharmacies.

Relatives abroad were able to pay for morphine, but by the time import clearance was obtained from the state Medicines Control Authority, the man had died in agony, the family said, requesting anonymity for fear of government retribution.

A report by six independent Zimbabwean doctors indicates the scale of the collapse.

“Elective surgery has been abandoned in the central hospitals and even emergency surgery is often dependent on the ability of patients’ relatives to purchase suture materials from private suppliers,” it said.

“Pharmacies stand empty and ambulances immobilised for want of spare parts … this is an unmitigated tragedy, scarcely conceivable just a year ago.”

No data are available on how many lives have been lost because of the medical crisis, but the report said hospital admissions declined sharply because of the cost of treatment and transportation to clinics. - AP
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