Patients are being expected to perform miracles in the absence of drugs, equipment and other basic hospital consumables, while in some cases the doctors are made to conduct surgeries with bare hands.<\/p>\n
In mid-March Zimbabwe\u2019s public sector doctors stopped working \u2013 the second time in three months \u2013 citing a critical shortage of drugs, equipment and consumables in hospitals, a development that they said not only reduced them to the sordid role of merely certifying deaths, but made them complicit in patients\u2019 mortality if they were to continue pretending that all was well.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs consultants, our hearts bleed because of what is prevailing [in the country\u2019s hospitals] and feel that if we continue pretending we can offer full services, we would be complicit in the deaths of our patients,\u201d the country’s senior doctors said in a statement announcing the start of their industrial action.<\/p>\n
The disgruntled doctors worked at the country\u2019s five referral hospitals. They said they would only attend to emergency cases, citing poor and inadequate medical supplies. In January, junior doctors went on a 40-day strike over similar concerns. It was the senior doctors who persuaded them to return to work and to allow the government breathing space to fulfil its promises.<\/p>\n
The promises included an improvement of the doctors\u2019 monthly salaries from $100 (RTGS$329) as well as improve the supply of hospital consumables in addition to replacing obsolete equipment, some of which is more than 40 years old. The government promised to put $25 million towards the urgent needs of the health sector, but did not bother to meet its side of the bargain, forcing the senior doctors to take up the issue themselves.<\/p>\n
In this Jan. 9, 2019, photo, a family collects the body of their son who died at Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe. The family blamed the death of their son on the doctors.
\nIn this Jan. 9, 2019, photo, a family collects the body of their son who died at Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe. The family blamed the death of their son on the doctors. (AP)
\nAt a meeting to address their concerns, the senior doctors gave harrowing stories of the dire situation in the country\u2019s hospitals \u2014 from having to clean deep wounds on burnt victims \u2013 including children \u2013 without first putting them on any pain-killers, to how bandages are washed so that they can be re-used, and to how patients suffer nosocomial infections inside the hospitals where there are no sterilisers, disinfectants and detergents, let alone protective clothing for medical staff who move from one bed to another in the crowded hospitals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no urgency, there is no priority, people are not listening to us,\u201d said a tearful Dr Azza Mashumba, the head of the Paediatric division at the Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals at a meeting in mid-March called by Health Minister Obadiah Moyo to avert the strike. \u201cI have written a million lists, I have knocked on a thousand doors, I come to work and I do my very best, but my outputs are stillbirths, my outputs are disabled babies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such were the harrowing accounts given by the doctors, who described how people are dying from treatable diseases at government hospitals owing to the shortage of basic medical equipment, medicines and other accessories.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe start them [patients] on chemotherapy and in two weeks, the syringes are finished. We interrupt treatment, then we restart and it doesn\u2019t work. What have we done for them? There is no urgency; I am here because I am desperate. I have tried, we have tried, but I feel we are not being heard. We need to move \u2026 we are not working,\u201d Mashumba said.<\/p>\n
Dr Faith Muchemwa, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon in the burns unit at the same main referral hospital, narrated how nurses are forced to wash used bandages with their bare hands so that they can be re-used, putting their health and those of the patients at grave risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the burns unit, there are no basic sundries and medicines. We have no bandages; they wash bandages and hang them in the bathroom and reuse. Obviously, they are not sterile. We have seen so many infections in the burns unit,\u201d said Muchemwa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe health personnel have no protective gear to prevent cross infections. This is despite the fact that we are dealing with open wounds and pus. Patients are dying more than ever because we are operating once every two weeks,\u201d a despondent Muchemwa added.<\/p>\n
The senior doctors highlighted that the persistent shortage of basic essential drugs, equipment and sundries \u2013 one of the major grievances that had culminated in the junior doctors\u2019 strike \u2013 remained unaddressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs consultants who were and are concerned with return to normalcy, we stepped in and persuaded the junior doctors to return to work in good faith that our parent ministry would improve the supply of the basic consumables,\u201d the doctors said in their statement. \u201cHowever, the situation with regards to medical consumables and equipment is now even worse than it was in December 2018.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, the doctors said, has continued to severely compromise the safety and working conditions of medical staff as well as \u201ccompromised patient care, putting patients\u2019 health and lives at risk at the very institution which is supposed to restore health and life.\u201d<\/p>\n
With 98 percent of medical drugs coming from donors, the health sector is not a priority for the government, which regularly spends generously on presidential junkets and other luxuries while threatening the unhappy health sector professionals.<\/p>\n
Just like in the days of former president Robert Mugabe, the leaders themselves seek medical treatments abroad as the facilities at home are hopeless. Zimbabwe has only three doctors for every 20,000 of its citizens.<\/p>\n
The government always blames all the country\u2019s woes on the targeted sanctions that the United States of America and other Western countries have imposed on Zimbabwe\u2019s leaders for nearly two decades as a way of forcing them to force them to improve their human rights record.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis [videos of weeping doctors that have gone viral on the social media] has been useful for the world to know that we are working under tough conditions as a result of the sanctions imposed on our country by the United States through ZIDERA [Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act],\u201d Moyo, the health minister, told the state-run Herald newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish that video could also reach the United States President Donald Trump so that he can be able to see the catastrophe which the sanctions have caused on the generality of Zimbabweans,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The minister himself, a long-time sidekick of former president Mugabe, has had difficulties endearing himself to development partners having failed to shrug off charges of being an academic and medical impostor, after being exposed as having masqueraded as a medical doctor for decades when he is a mere laboratory technician.<\/p>\n
However shortly after the senior doctors joined the junior doctors in highlighting the dire situation in the public hospitals, Moyo summarily dismissed Dr Thomas Zigora and Dr Nyasha Masuka, the chief executive officers of Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals and Harare Central Hospital respectively, on flimsy charges of being late to a meeting with him. It was believed the dismissal of the heads of the country\u2019s two major referral hospitals is part of a purge against senior medical personnel that have been questioning Moyo\u2019s suitability to turn around the country\u2019s health sector given his background of fake qualifications.<\/p>\n
In early May, Hospital Doctors Association of Zimbabwe (HDAZ) Spokesperson Dr Mxolisi Ngwenya revealed that none of the government\u2019s promises \u2013 including a salary hike \u2013 had been fulfilled, so the junior doctors could be back on strike again any day from now.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing has changed,\u201d Ngwenya told TRT World. \u201cWe called off the strike to give the government a chance to fulfill its promises, unto now, our salaries remain unchanged, drug supply remain critical and equipment is still dilapidated. It is clear that government was not negotiating in good faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
The planned strike would be the third inside five months as doctors desperately seek to force the government to make it possible for them to provide service to patients.<\/p>\n
Nurses are working for three days a week as the government cannot afford to pay them, while thousands others have been trained but remain unemployed as the government has frozen recruitment of public sector workers in an attempt to manage its wage bill. The public sector is bloated, mostly from ruling ZANU-PF party officials, war veterans and their children that make the bulk of the ghost workers that continue to strain the state coffers.<\/p>\n
A 2011 comprehensive payroll and skills audit done by Ernst & Young on behalf of the ministry of Public Service revealed that there were over 75,000 ghost workers on the government payroll.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile a group of citizens, led by journalist and filmmaker Hopewell Chin\u2019ono has started a Save Our Hospitals Zimbabwe initiative to mobilise resources to bring some level of normalcy to the country\u2019s hospitals. The initiative involves mobilising all types of resources from Zimbabweans based both at home and abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Patients are being expected to perform miracles in the absence of drugs, equipment and other basic hospital consumables, while in some cases the doctors are made to conduct surgeries with bare hands. In mid-March Zimbabwe\u2019s public sector doctors stopped working \u2013 the second time in three months \u2013 citing a critical shortage of drugs, equipment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[383,83,504,55,166,371],"class_list":{"0":"post-8497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-files","9":"tag-drug","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-emergency","12":"tag-government","13":"tag-hospital","14":"tag-rtgs"},"yoast_head":"\n