LACK of basic medications and requisite equipment in most of Zimbabwe’s health institutions both primary and public health facilities has led to poor health seeking behavior by citizens, leading to a spike in community COVID-19 deaths and uncontrolled community transmissions, Mr Itai Rusike, the Executive Director for the Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) has said.
By Michael Gwarisa
His remarks come at the back of recent revelations by tow of the College of Primary Healthcare Physicians in Zimbabwe (CPCPZ) and the Zimbabwe College of Public Health Physicians (ZCPHP) that one in every three people who are dying of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe were dying outside health facilities.
In an interview with HealthTimes, Mr Rusike said a person has a bigger chance of dying from COVID-19 in Zimbabwe than anywhere else in the region.
It is very worrying that Zimbabwe has one of the highest case fatality rates in the region and a lot more people are dying of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe if we compare to other countries in our region. I think this is attributed to a number of factors, our health delivery systems unfortunately was not well equipped to deal with this COVID pandemic.
“When you look at the issue of community deaths, we still have a challenge with health seeking behavior as some people are very skeptical of our health delivery system and knowing that they may not get much support when they go to a health facility because our hospitals have been facing a lot of challenges and as a result, you would find that some people opt to get sick at home and only to seek for hospital services when their situation really gets worse,” said Mr Rusike.
He added that most of Zimbabwe’s health facilities especially those in outlying areas do not have the requisite equipment especially to deal with severe COVID-19 cases in terms of oxygen provision, in terms of ICU facilities and also the challenge with human resources for health.
“As a result, some people are now dying at home because of that, similarly we still have some areas where health facilities are also very far away despite us having a government policy which says that there should be a health facility within every 10-kilometer radius and if you look at resettlement areas and farming communities, some are still traveling distances of up to 30 kilometers for them to be able to access healthcare services.”
He said there was still a sizable number of antivaxxers and those that still have vaccine hesitancy and skepticism and they would rather try home remedies before their condition gets worse and unfortunately some were dying at home. He also blamed the porous borders for the growing number of community transmissions and deaths and some people evade use undesignated points to get into the country.
