Health delivery system in ICU

MOSES MATENGA

The health delivery system in Zimbabwe has become dire with former Health Minister, Henry Madzorera, a medical doctor by profession, saying virtually nothing is working in hospitals from basics like bandages, medicine to infrastructure.

Madzorera condemned the health delivery system days after Zanu PF Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister, Tinomudaishe Machakaire, painted a gloomy picture of the situation in hospitals and pleaded with President Emmerson Mnangagwa to see for himself the situation on the ground and act to address the crisis.

“It’s shortages everywhere,” Madzorera said. “It’s decapitation everywhere. If you look at the infrastructure to begin with, the infrastructure is broken down. It’s dilapidated. What we call hotel services within the institutions is poor, it’s extremely poor,” he added.

“Patients should feel at home when there are in hospital. They must be fed well, the facilities must be clean, it must be a place to recover, not a place to get more diseases so the infrastructure needs rehabilitation,” the former Senator said.

Shortages of essentials a huge factor

“We go to medicines, equipment and other technologies there is a shortage everywhere. There are no medicines, people have to buy their own medicines while in hospital,” he added.

“They don’t provide anything right now in most hospitals. Even if you are going to theatre you have to buy your own stuff. You have to buy your own bandages and your own switchers and everything.”

Madzorera said there are no tests being conducted in public hospitals with patients being forced to fork out a lot of money to acquire tests somewhere.

“There are virtually doing no tests. The tests that I know they are doing at the moment is tuberculosis tests otherwise everything else is down. If you want a full blood count you will to go to town to get it and yet we know our hospitals used to do all the tests required for a patient in a hospital.”

“Radiology services are not working. You can’t get an x-ray or ultrasound scan in most of our hospitals. People have to go out by ambulance or other means to get radiology services. That is the problem, its shortages.”

“People would come to hospital just because there are doctors and nurses there, that’s how bad it is. Everything else people have to buy.”

Human resources a bigger challenge, moral all-time low

“If it comes to human resources for health, there is a shortage everywhere and overworked doctors and nurses are not good.

“The establishment that we are using right now in our institutions is the one that was done in the early 80s round about independence time. The population has since doubled and I am quite aware that around 2009-2010, the health services board that time proposed a new establishment for the hospitals and clinics and as far as I am aware it was approved but it was never implemented.”

“We can’t still be working with an establishment that was made in the early 80s.

Doctors in opaque deals for extra income

Madzorera also lamented poor remuneration for doctors that he said was leading to them engaging in other activities to get extra income.

 “We see that informal charges are beginning to crip into the hospitals. If nurses and doctors are not paid properly, yes informal charges will come, charges outside the system to get services and that is pathetic and needs to be dealt with and how do you deal with it? It’s not by punishing the health workers but by remunerating them more reasonably so that they can do their work without seeking extra sources of income.”

Government in no-show to address the issues

“The question then is why do we have these problems of shortages and dilapidation of infrastructure? Is it because those at the hospitals don’t know what to do? The answer is simple, the government is not meeting their end of the bargain. By law there supposed to give certain funds to the hospitals every year but that is not happening.”

Hospitals, Madzorera said, were now being forced to use money they collect from patients instead of government chipping in.

“They are supposed to use the money from patients to renovate the hospitals, to buy detergents, to clean the hospitals.”

However, the government remain in defensive mode despite glaring failure to address the crisis in the health sector.

Following concerns raised by Machakaire, the ministry of Health and Care immediately issued a statement saying all was well, falling short of calling the Youth Minister a liar.

The ministry described Machakaire’s claim as “unwarranted and mischievous attacks.”

“These comments seem to be well orchestrated efforts aimed at selectively highlighting challenges within the public healthcare system, while deliberately overlooking the critical services still being provided- often under resource constraint conditions and the significant progress made in recent years,” the ministry’s statement read in part.

Opposition MP blasts ‘lying’ Ministers says the health crisis as disaster

Member of Parliament Gladys Hlatywayo said: “It is unfortunate that we have Ministers who are in the business of misrepresenting facts. I think everyone knows the situation that we have in our hospitals, things are not looking good, there are no medicines, there is no equipment, no, personnel because there is lots of brain drain, people are running away from our hospitals seeking greener pastures.

“It really calls for introspection and looking at issues as they are. I thought that the government is going to declare a national disaster or a national emergency in our hospitals so that we are supposed to canvas for support.”