By Nomusa Garikai | In August last year, VP Constantino Guveya Chiwenga promised that Zimbabwe will have a five star health care service.
”Things will never be the same again. We are restructuring and reforming our health delivery system. We want to rebuild the structures from village to referral level. Things will never be the same again,” he said.
“We have already identified the problems and we do not want a repeat of what was happening before.”
He said that in August 2020, nearly a year ago now. Things have not improved. Indeed, if anything the situation is dire now than even.
Zimbabwe’s health care services have all but collapsed because of decades of being starved of funds. The country has haemorrhaged so many health care workers over the years forced to leave the country in search of a living wage and a future for themselves and their family. As we speak, many nurses are back on strike demanding better wages and working conditions. Government is still failing to provide adequate PPE for the corona virus frontline health care workers.
The feared new corona virus outbreak is upon us with reports of 1 820 new cases and 26 deaths in one day. Health care workers are amount the new cases with 25 and 3 nurses from Zvishavane Hospital and Claybank Hospital respectively on that list.
“Nurses have been on strike for the 34 days with only student nurses and those on probation reporting for work at hospitals. Other health workers, fearing to contract the deadly virus, are reportedly taking leave days, forcing some hospitals to shut down even casualty departments that had remained operational,” reported Bulawayo 24.
“To this end, all nurses including those on probation are advised not to continue to go to work and to withdraw their labour. This is no longer an issue about remuneration only but it is also about their health,” said Enoch Dongo, Zimbabwe Nurses Association president.
“People are dying at home.”
This only serves to highlight the glaring discrepancy between Zimbabwe’s official 38 682 corona virus cases and 1 586 deaths. All those people who are sick and dying at home are never tested and therefore are never included in the official figures.
It is worrying that many health care workers should be infected since they are supposed to be all vaccinated by now. But with under 600 000 or 6% of the target 10 million vaccinated, it is quite possible many of the health care workers are yet to be vaccinated.
Many nations have already vaccinated 70% plus of their people and are set to reach their target herd immunity in the next two or three months. Only VP Chiwenga can answer why Zimbabwe has taken six months since the first vaccines were approved to vaccinated a measly 6% of the target 10 million?
“While covid-19 is spreading all over, the government is not doing anything to capacitate our hospitals. We are surely bound to lose the fight against covid-19 with this sort of approach,” warned Dongo.
The truth is with the hospitals that are so poorly equipped, not even clean running water, no nurses and doctors poorly; of course with have lost the fight against even the common cold much less covid-19!
VP Chiwenga was only boasting about Zimbabwe a five star health care service. He is just a blundering buffoon whose only care is to remain in power so that he and his fellow Zanu PF cronies can continue to rob the nation blind.
A lifestyle audit of VP Chiwenga and the Zanu PF ruling elite will show they are the Godfathers of the wholesale looting that has created a filthy rich ruling elite at the expense of the millions now living in abject poverty. The ruling elite have built sprawling palatial mansions, with fleets of posh cars and live extravagant lifestyles. VP Chiwenga has indulged his love of watches; he has over 45 gold watches alone.
Zimbabwe is not a poor country, it only appears so because the country’s vast wealth is being creamed off to feed the insatiable greed of the ruling elite and their foreign masters. Andrew Flaming, renamed Parerenyatwa Hospital after independence, was a five star hospital. It has long since lost all the star rating.
What a time for the country’s health care services to collapse! Zimbabwe will pay dear dearly, in lost opportunity and cash plus heartbreaking human suffering and lost lives, for doing nothing these last 41 years whilst the country went to the dogs. And as long as the country remains a pariah state ruled by corrupt and vote rigging thugs, there will be no meaningful economic recovery, no sound health care, no education, etc.
Zimbabwe will have a five star health care service! That was just the “boastful dog claiming to put out the furnace fire with its punny fart!” as the great Chinua Achebe so aptly put it. – SOURCE: zsdemocrats.blogspot.com