Zimbabwe doctors' advice: Don't get sick
Yahoo News
By ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Writer Sun Aug 31, 11:59 AM ET
HARARE, Zimbabwe - The advice of doctors to Zimbabweans is, don't get
sick. If you do, don't count on hospitals - they're short of drugs and
functioning equipment.
As the economy collapses, the laboratory at a main 1,000-bed hospital
has virtually shut down. X-ray materials, injectable antibiotics and
anticonvulsants have run out.
Emergency resuscitation equipment is out of action. Patients needing
casts for broken bones need to bring their own plaster. In a country
with one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics, medical staff lack
protective gloves.
Health authorities blame the drying up of foreign aid under Western
sanctions imposed to end political and human rights abuses under
President Robert Mugabe. A power-sharing agreement aimed at bringing
the opposition into the government could open the gates to foreign aid.
But negotiations have stalled over how much power rests with Mugabe.
Meanwhile, the economic meltdown is evident in empty store shelves,
long lines at gas stations - and hospitals where elevators don't work
and patients are carried to upper wards in make****ft hammocks of torn
sheets and blankets.
Jacob Kwaramba, an insurance clerk, brought his brother to Harare's
Parirenyatwa hospital, once the pride of health services in southern
Africa. Emergency room doctors sent Kwaramba to a private pharmacy to
buy drugs for his brother's lung infection. He returned two hours later
to find his brother dead, he told the AP in the emergency room.
"I couldn't believe it. It wasn't a fatal illness," he said.
Another family said a relative dying of cancer was sent home, and no
painkillers could be found in Harare pharmacies. Relatives abroad were
able to pay for morphine, but by the time im****t clearance was obtained
from the state Medicines Control Authority, the man had died in agony,
the family said, requesting anonymity for fear of government
retribution.
A re****t by six independent Zimbabwean doctors indicates the scale of
the collapse.
"Elective surgery has been abandoned in the central hospitals and even
emergency surgery is often dependent on the ability of patients'
relatives to purchase suture materials from private suppliers," it
said.
"Pharmacies stand empty and ambulances immobilized for want of spare
parts ... this is an unmitigated tragedy, scarcely conceivable just a
year ago."
The doctors who compiled the six-page re****t for circulation among aid
and development groups withheld their names because comments seen as
critical of Mugabe are a punishable offense.
In an interview this year, Health Minister David Parirenyatwa said lack
of foreign currency due to sanctions was hindering efforts to maintain
equipment. But political violence has added to the burden. The human
rights group Amnesty International said hospitals ran out of crutches
for victims of attacks blamed on Mugabe's forces.
The independent Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum, an alliance of human
rights campaigners, said doctors and medical staff were chased from
rural clinics to keep them from helping opposition sup****ters, while
many city hospitals couldn't cope with the number of patients injuries
sustained in beatings and torture blamed mostly on militants of
Mugabe's party and police and soldiers.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change says at least 200 of its
sup****ters died in the violence, with thousands more beaten and made
homeless.
No data is available on how many lives have been lost because of the
medical crisis, but the re****t said hospital admissions declined
sharply because of the cost of treatment and trans****tation over long
distances to clinics and hospitals.
In recent years, 70 percent of births took place in health facilities;
now it's under 50 percent, the re****t said.
It said that a decade ago Zimbabwe had the best health system in
sub-Saharan Africa. But with the economic crisis worsening, 10,000
Zimbabwean nurses are employed in Britain alone, and 80 percent of
Zimbabwean medical graduates working abroad.
The main Harare medical school, once renowned for the quality of its
graduates, has lost 60 percent of its complement of lecturers, and an
unprecedented 30 percent of its students failed this year's final
examinations.
The re****t said despite the troubles, health professionals still manage
to run clean and well ordered facilities.
"The pharmacy may be empty and most equipment out of order, but they
will be striving to provide some sort of service," it said.
Health Minister Parirenyatwa estimated the public sector had only half
the doctors it needed. The main Harare hospital is named after his
father, one of the first blacks to qualify as a doctor before Zimbabwe
won independence from Britain in 1980.
The elite go for care abroad, mostly to South Africa, but also to Asia.
Mugabe regularly has checkups in Malaysia.
But the doctors said that if there was a plane crash or similar
disaster, victims who might otherwise be saved by prompt and
well-equipped care would likely end up as "dead meat."
___
Associated Press Writer Clare Nullis contributed to this re****t.
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