Health sector suffers from shortages

Zimbabwe's health care sector has been badly affected by chronic shortages of essential medical supplies. Last Thursday Bulawayo's major state hospitals announced that they were suspending medical operations for all "non-life threatening" ailments because of a critical shortage of essential drugs. Officials at Mpilo Central and the United Bulawayo Hospitals told the media these categories of operations had been suspended because the shortage of anaesthetics and narcotics, which began last year and had worsened in the last two months, had now become critical. United Bulawayo Hospital's Medical Superintendent Dr. Gordon Gwisai confirmed the new development, but stressed that the hospital would continue to operate on patients with life threatening conditions. Mpilo Hospital's medical superintendent also confirmed that the institution was saving essential drugs for operations in emergency cases only. The officials said hospitals in Bulawayo, like all public institutions throughout the country, were facing a critical shortage due to the inability of the National Pharmaceutical Company (NatPharm) to secure enough drugs. A senior official with NatPharm confirmed that the parastatal's drug stores were practically empty. "Some of the drugs have to be imported and NatPharm simply does not have the foreign currency required to buy them. Even those that can be found locally are so expensive that we cannot afford to buy stocks that can fill up the pharmacies of the major hospitals and referral clinics," said the official, who wished not to be identified. The city's major hospitals have appealed to relatives of patients requiring operations to provide the drugs if they can, to avoid waiting for government supplies. However, this is likely to make access to public health care a privilege only the rich can afford, due to cost of drugs and surgery fees. The suspension of medical operations in Bulawayo hospitals follows reports that Gwanda Provincial Hospital, the only major health institution and referral centre in Matabeleland South, has not been able to conduct basic surgical operations because the thread required to stitch wounds together is unavailable. The hospital was reported to have stopped operations as early as April, and had been referring cases requiring surgical operations to the United Bulawayo and Mpilo Hospitals where the surgical thread was still available. The new development in Bulawayo will also affect all the Matabeleland North district hospitals, which had been referring cases requiring operations to the institutions in the city. Hospitals throughout the Midlands had also been referring critical surgical cases to the Bulawayo hospitals due to a lack of specialised equipment in the province. Apart from the shortage of drugs and medical equipment, Zimbabwe's public health sector faces a number of other problems, including a severe shortage of food for patients. As a result of the critical food shortage in the country, many government hospitals now encourage patients' relatives to bring their own food because the health institutions do not have enough money to procure adequate food. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned in a press release that the country "has experienced a number of disease epidemics in the past 12 months, threatening the lives of thousands of children and other vulnerable sections of the population". OCHA said the government's efforts at conducting vaccination programmes had been severely curtailed by shortages of "fuel, finance and transport", and pointed to a recent outbreak of measles reported in Mutare District in Manicaland Province. "Since the onset at the beginning of July, a total of 40 cases were reported ... [however,] twelve reported deaths could not be laboratory confirmed. The outbreak is centered in the Marange community of the Apostolic faith sect, who do not believe in modern medicine - including vaccination," OCHA noted. Personnel from the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare had conducted an urgent vaccination programme targeting all children between nine months and 14 years, with a total of 2,000 children having been vaccinated to date. The government of Zimbabwe had adopted a policy of eliminating measles through outreach and static vaccination programmes. To this end, an extended programme of immunisation had been one of the flagship projects run by the Zimbabwe government but "it has been severely affected by the current humanitarian crisis, coupled with the severe economic recession". "The [vaccination] outreach programme has been the most affected component in the face of the unavailability of fuel, finance and transport. This has resulted in lack of access to basic health services, particularly to those populations that have been resettled, thus making them more susceptible to disease outbreaks," OCHA noted.