THOUSANDS of desperate Zimbabweans were this week left without public health services for the third week as health care workers continued striking, amid growing fears that many will be left to die as a worsening crisis in the health care sector takes its toll, warns Citizens Heath Watch (CHW).
By HealthTimes Correspondent
This week, 18 health care workers at the government run, referral hospital United Bulawayo Hospitals tested positive for Covid 19, as nurses at public institutions countrywide continue to withhold their services making the plight of Zimbabweans more challenging, as local infections from the virus continue to rise. Covid 19 testing capacity remains disturbingly low, while frontline health workers fear for their health with lack of PPE reported at health institutions.
CHW Findings at Public Health Centres
CHW heath monitors, who have been monitoring the country’s Covid 19 response and crisis measures to deliver health services in the 10 provinces, recorded a catalogue of shocking failures at public hospitals uncovering the following:
- Some unmanned Covid 19 screening centres at health institutions
- Limited and inconsistent Covid 19 screening at public hospitals
- Patients in despair and desperate as private health care has skyrocketed
- Health workers are frightened and feel neglected
- Many failing to access emergency care and being turned away
- Many empty work stations
- Many urgent services such as operations for cancer patients suspended
- Patients not being issued critical ART medicines timely
- Situation at night is even worse as most wards in the major referral and central hospitals are manned by skeletal staff if not completely abandoned
- Maternity departments have been left with few midwives in attendance.
- The two day 12hr working shifts per week are compromising quality of service
- A handful of mostly nursing students at maternity wards
- Expectant mothers failing to access antenatal care as they are turned away from both local clinics and referral centres.
- The already obsolete hospital equipment such as scans not serviced and lying redundant
- Several of the hospitals are not offering Sexual Reproductive Health Services
A deepening crisis
The Covid 19 response is riddled with piecemeal containment measures and a maze of inconsistent guidelines relating not only to the Covid-19 response but to emergency health delivery measures as witnessed by the temporary suspension this week of the issuing of blood coupons to public hospitals, after government failed to pay the National Blood Services of Zimbabwe (NBSZ).
Zimbabwe’s health crisis, years in the making, has been worsened by massive corruption brought to the fore after weeks of public revelations about corruption in the procurement of Covid 19 supplies, underfunding of the health sector, human rights violations such as the arrest of some striking health care workers over a pay dispute.
CHW is also concerned about government’s lack of urgency in appointing a replacement for the Minister of Health who was fired this week after he appeared in court facing allegations of abuse of office, relating to the procurement to Covid 19 supplies. This is not the time for complacency. We implore the government to quickly appoint a substantive replacement.
“CHW believes the coming months will see the worsening of heath indicators in a country that already has a high disease burden from diseases such HIV, malaria TB, diarrheal disease all in the midst of worsening food insecurity. Health inequalities are becoming more apparent as it becomes clear that many people in resource poor settings do not have the ability to pay for private health let alone emergency Covid 19 care, with private hospitals demanding up to US$5000 on admission of Covid 19 patients,” said Fungisai Dube.
The heath sector has been pushed to the brink and in the coming months the country will pay a heavy price for its poor response to Covid 19 and its total neglect of treatment alternatives for other diseases. We remind government that no war can be won against Covid-19 without the frontline health care workers.
Even the muted re-lockdowns are an exercise in futility without equal commitment to basic health fundamentals. Zimbabwe’s cases continue to surge with increasing local transmissions and there is need for genuine political will to deal with the covid crisis and failure to deal with the health workers’ strike is a reflection of a halfhearted approach detrimental to the nation.
