By Michael Gwarisa
Health insurance coverage in Zimbabwe has declined to a historic low, with new data revealing that only four percent of the country’s population is currently covered by any form of medical aid. This comes after more than a decade in which the national coverage rate stagnated at around 10 percent, raising fresh concerns about the accessibility and affordability of healthcare in the country.
The figures are drawn from the latest Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS), which paints a stark picture of declining health insurance coverage across the country. According to the survey, only 640,000 Zimbabweans out of a population of 16 million have some form of health insurance, leaving a staggering 14.8 million citizens without coverage. This includes approximately 7.36 million women and 7.52 million men who reported they were not enrolled in any medical aid scheme. The data shows that medical aid coverage is now at its lowest point in recent history, with current figures indicating a 60 percent drop from the 1.6 million people who were previously estimated to have coverage during the 2010 to 2020 period.
Grace Chaora, a statistician with ZIMSTAT, said the findings confirm that the majority of the population remains uncovered by any formal health insurance.
We asked people about health insurance, and the majority reported that they had none,” she said. “About 94 percent of men and 92 percent of women said they have no coverage at all. We only have eight percent of women and seven percent of men who reported having health insurance.”
A closer analysis of the data shows that employer-based insurance remains the most common form of coverage, with four percent of women and three percent of men indicating they received health insurance through their workplace. Chaora noted that just two percent of the population reported having insurance through social security programs, a figure that further underscores the limited reach of public or state-supported health coverage in the country.
Health insurance coverage among women rose slightly from seven percent in 2010 to 11 percent in 2015, before dropping to eight percent in 2023 and 2024. A similar trend is observed among men, with coverage increasing from nine percent in 2010 to 12 percent in 2015, only to fall back to eight percent in the most recent data collection. These shifts suggest that while there were modest gains in health insurance uptake during the early 2010s, those improvements have not been sustained.
The sharp decline in coverage poses a serious challenge to Zimbabwe’s healthcare system. Experts warn that with the majority of the population uninsured, millions are at risk of catastrophic health expenditures or going without care altogether. The findings come at a time when the government has been exploring the establishment of a National Health Insurance Scheme, a policy proposal that could help expand coverage to more citizens. However, the implementation of such a scheme remains in the planning stages and has not yet translated into broad-based access.
