Zim health system 'needs help'
2009-01-13 19:16
Special Report
Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai says the government desperately needs revenue from diamond sales, after the lifting of a global ban imposed over military abuses.
A dusty road leads to the village of Wedza, where veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war eke out a meagre living on their farm cooperative, which after a promising start now brings only despair.
Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's collapsed healthcare system should be placed under international receivership, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
"We recommend the entire health system... water, sanitation... be handed over to world receivership," said PHR chief executive officer Frank Donaghue.
If the administration in Zimbabwe refused, the United Nations Security Council should compel it to allow the receivership.
At the same time, the security council should ask the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to begin documenting evidence of human rights abuses there.
These include violations of the right to health, food, water and work said PHR.
Although Zimbabwe is not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, Article 13 (b) of the statute enables this intervention, via the security council.
The cholera crisis, which according to reports on Reliefweb has left 2 024 people dead and affected about 35 000, is a symptom of that country's collapsed healthcare system, Donaghue said.
Bodies are "piled up like logs" in mortuaries with nobody to pronounce people dead, hospitals are closed because they do not have water or sanitation, HIV/Aids antiretroviral regimes are cut short when anti-retroviral refills are not available, increasing the threat of a regional spread of drug resistant HIV/Aids.
Medical staff cannot afford to get to work or buy food for themselves, the ill cannot afford to travel to the limited health care facilities available, and are being transported by ox cart or wheelbarrow. It costs from $100 to use a private ambulance for a short trip. Harare's main river is so contaminated with sewerage that it has plants growing over its surface, PHR said.
"Healthcare workers are starving, there are no basic medicines, there is not an antibiotic," said Donaghue.
He said those who are working are brave because they work for nothing, and have nothing to eat.
Life expectancy has dropped from 62 to 36 years of age.
University of the Western Cape public health professor David Sanders, who lectured paediatrics in Zimbabwe while in exile, said the situation is caused by the country's economic collapse under President Robert Mugabe's leadership.
Wells are contaminated with cholera, ageing water and sewerage pipes, installed parallel to each other, are leaking into each other, and "nobody" in Harare drinks tap water, he said.
Public obstetric care is not available in Harare and it costs $3 700 to be admitted for private care, which is out of the reach of most Zimbabweans, PHR report.
Of the around 800 000 people who require antiretroviral treatment for HIV/Aids, only 205 000 are receiving it.
About half the population will require food by the end of January.
PHR submits that the situation is in violation of international covenants Zimbabwe has signed to protect the well-being of its citizens.
The physicians called for an "immediate resolution" to the political impasse and support from the world's governments for efforts by South Africa and the Southern African Development Community to solve the political problems.
They said if a government considered legitimate came into power, then it could be assumed that government would co-operate with international aid agencies and there should be a "very large aid package for Zimbabwe".
Aid should be targeted and not politicised, with proper evaluation of who is receiving it and its effectiveness, they say.
The report has also been sent to US president-elect Barack Obama, but the PHR believes South Africa "clearly holds the key to the problem".
Donaghue said the problems had been well documented over the last 20 years, "but the world ignores it".
PHR is an organisation that tracks health rights violations around the world.
- SAPA