Tino Machakaire, the Youth Empowerment, Development and Vocational Training minister, yesterday spoke from the heart, amplifying the deteriorating state of the country’s healthcare system.
The minister, who had visited a public hospital to see an ill relative, was moved by the appalling state of affairs, “a clear indication that many of our people are facing serious challenges”.
“The growing public outcry over our healthcare system is not an exaggeration; it reflects the difficult experiences of many citizens,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Machakaire felt a solemn responsibility to speak openly, saying there was a danger of unintentionally overlooking “important realities on the ground” in “our desire to present progress”.
He urged President Emmerson Mnangagwa to find time from his “busy schedule to visit these institutions”. According to Machakaire, there is “no substitute for seeing, listening and understanding firsthand what our citizens are going through”.
Such honesty on the party of Machakaire should be applauded and the matter to be addressed urgently, instead of waiting for a meeting where bureaucrats paint a rosy picture of the state of affairs.
He is not the first or last to flag the deteriorating state of the healthcare system.
Last week, Ellen, daughter of the late national hero Brigadier General Victor Rungani (Retired), narrated how her father was moved from one hospital to another in search of a ventilator.
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Before her, investigative journalist Hopewell Chingono has been consistent in exposing the rot in the health sector.
Public hospitals have become death traps as they lack basic drugs like Paracetamol and sundries such as bandages.
A Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development report showed that more than half of the country’s 57 districts were enduring a poor supply of essential medical drugs.
Government officials won’t experience the appalling service as they can access top facilities in the country or outside the country’s borders. They will only feel the pain if a relative is admitted to a public hospital, like what Machakaire experienced yesterday.
At the heart of the crisis facing the health sector is underfunding. Government funding is falling short of regional and continental benchmarks. Whereas the Abuja Declaration states that at least 15% of the budget should be allocated to health, funding to the sector has ranged between 10 and 12% of the budget.
Co-operating partners have been plugging some of the holes. However, given rising nationalism in some countries, like the US where President Donald Trump adopted the Make America Great Again mantra, funding has dwindled.
The health workforce is ill-equipped and overworked, with the nurse-to-patient ratio as high as 1:30 in some wards.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) describes sound health systems in terms of six core components or “building blocks” which are service delivery, health workforce, health information systems, access to essential medicines, financing and leadership or governance.
The six building blocks, according to WHO, contribute to strengthening the health system in different ways. Some cross-cutting components, such as leadership/governance and health information systems, provide the basis for the overall policy and regulation of all the other building blocks.
Zimbabwe has fallen short of attaining all the benchmarks. Government must rescue the health sector, lest the second republic will be remembered for hitting the final nail into the coffin of the health sector.
