Gweru-Zimbabwe-76-year-old Ambuya ( a local name for grandmother) Mandlovu of Mutapa suburb, in the Midlands province capital, Gweru, visits the province's largest referral hospital. A diabetic patient, Ambuya Ndlovu hopes to find the drugs that can ease her condition. But the hospital, despite the infrastructure that gives it an appearance of a magnificent health center is a pale shadow of what used to be excellent health facilities that could be accessed by patients a few years ago. Gweru is Zimbabwe's third largest city. Despite opening its doors to the public, Gweru General Hospital, just like other big hospitals in Zimbabwe has literally closed its doors as drugs and other health equipment are just not available. Who could ever have imagined that patients like Granny Mandlovu would one day be asked to buy their own needles and medications at government health institutions?
Yet this is the true reality that patients in Zimbabwe have to grapple with as the health delivery system continue to be in the intensive care unit. The situation has brought a hanging dark cloud over those who are sick. Ironicaly even if the system is in the intensive unit, obsolete equipment and lack of drugs in the theatre render successful surgical operations a nightmare. This has become the health system in Zimbabwe, as political leaders dither on agreeing on a power sharing agreement signed seven weeks ago.
Many pin their hopes on the political talks. They strongly believe that if (power sharing talks) are concluded, they can revive everything that has gone wrong in Zimbabwe. They count on starting from scratch from a crumbling health, education and economic system to the provision of adequate food for legions of improvished ordinary people. The three political leaders, Robert Mugabe of Zanu PF, Morgan Tsvangirai of the main Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Professor Arthur Mutambara of the smaller MDC formation signed an agreement to form a Government of National Unity on September 15, but to date nothing has materialised. The three protagonists are deadlocked on how to share cabinet posts. The matter has since been referred to a full Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) regional summit to be held at a yet to be disclosed venue in a fortnight after the SADC Troika on Defence, Politics and Security failed to break the impasse, this Monday in the capital Harare.
What has worsened the sad situation at referral hospitals is that health personnel have gone on strike pressing for better salaries and working conditions. In the capital Harare junior doctors and nursres at Parirenyatwa, Harare and Chitungwiza Central hospitals have put down the tools of their trade too in demand of a review of their salaries. At another referral hospital, United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH) in Zimbabwe's second largest city, Bulawayo, the theatre department ran out of anesthetic and other tools needed in carrying out surgical operations. The state-controlled daily press reports that the department is no longer functional as of last week.
An unnamed source at the hospital is qouted in this Thursday's The Chronicle as saying: "This also means that the hospital is no longer adequately equipped to deal with disasters such as road accidents, which should never be the case with such a big medical institution like UBH."
The same government-controlled paper qoutes the Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Edwin Muguti admitting that the situation at hospitals is "serious" but apportioning the blame on "sanctions."
"Generally we have a serious shortage countrywide and these are the effects of sanctions." He said there are "serious challenges" in getting theatre consumables and drugs" "throughout the country" but that "sanctions are biting and crippling the system."
Many western countries have however repeatedly denied that sanctions on Zimbabwe are meant to hurt the ordinary people, but that they are targetted at Robert Mugabe and those close to him, in a bid to put pressure on the Harare regime to observe political and other human rights. Mugabe's government however maintain that problems bedevilling Zimbabwe are largely a result of sanctions from western countries led by former coloniser Britain and the United States.
"What Zanu PF has done is repeatedly assert through the state-controlled media that Zimbabwean problems stem from sanctions. They don't appreciate that most of these problems are a result of their bad policies. They want to repeat a lie until it is forcibly ingrained in the minds of people as the truth," says Dzikamai Machingura, Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ) Advocacy Coordinator at a recent Public Information Rights Forum workshop.
The bulk of those infected with the HIV and AIDS pandemic are the worst affected. Given the ailing health sector, they can't access life serving anti-retroviral drugs and other medication vital in fighting Aids related opportunistic infections. The situation is worsened by failure to access and afford health food that help fight infections.
Even the United Nations chief, Ban Ki-moon is deeply concerned about the situation in Zimbabwe.
Speaking Wednesday at the UN Forum on migration in the Philippines, Ki-moon said the political settlement in Zimbabwe has taken "too long." He urged SADC leaders as they decide to convene a full summit meeting to consider "their responsibility and see peace and stability maintained" in the region and to take "very decisive measures to help resolve this crisis."
Zimbabwe is currently going through a serious economic recession with annual inflation officially pegged at 231 million percent. The country's health, education, industries and social institutions are at a standstill as the power sharing deal signed by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara has stalled over the allocation of cabinet ministries considered "key."
