This is a field report and call to action from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and our colleagues at the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR), who are hosting an international, emergency press conference at 10 a.m. Eastern today. The call-in press conference will provide first-hand reports from health professionals on the ground in Harare and to call for an international crisis response to the total collapse of Zimbabwe's health system. If you would like to live blog the eywitness reports from Zimbabwean health professionals of the crisis, here's how to call in.
Zimbabwe's health system has failed: authorities have closed the country's main hospitals in Harare and Bulawayo, along with the maternity wards and a medical school. The country is paralyzed by drug shortages, insufficient medical supplies, dilapidated infrastructure, and equipment breakdown. Sick and injured people are being turned away without treatment. Birthing mothers and their infants are imperiled. On top of this, the country is threatened with a full-blown cholera epidemic that the government has failed to address.
Nearly 1,000 doctors, nurses, and other health professionals staged a mass protest on Tuesday. But truckloads of riot police, clad in helmets and wielding shields and clubs, broke it up. Although the protesters later regrouped, the police locked them into the grounds of Harare's Parirenyatwa Hospital.
Minutes ago, colleagues in Zimbabwe emailed PHR these photos of yesterday's health worker protest.
Health workers assemble outside Parirenyatwa Hospital.
Truckloads of riot police arrive to disperse the demonstration.
A sign calls for clean water in the taps, in part to prevent the spread of a deadly cholera epidemic.
Riot police break up the demonstration.
A demonstrator's sign exhorts: Zimbabwe, wake up to your strength.
"The international community has taken upon itself the responsibility to protect civilians whose lives are threatened on a large scale by government failures," stated Frank Donaghue, PHR’s CEO, who recently returned from Zimbabwe. "The international community, acting through the UN, should also devise a way to step in urgently to replace the life-saving functions of a health system that has totally collapsed. PHR is concerned that all the early-warning signs and worsening health indicators are also present to threaten peace and security in the region."
ZADHR just emailed us a statement describing the dire conditions:
Health System Collapse
Zimbabwe’s public health system is in a state of collapse and in need of urgent action to rescue it. It has been paralysed by drug shortages, insufficient medical supplies, dilapidated infrastructure, equipment breakdowns and brain drain. The main referral hospitals in the country – Harare Central Hospital and Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare and Mpilo Hospital and United Bulawayo Hospitals in Bulawayo have been virtually closed. Most district hospitals and municipal clinics are barely functioning or closed. Sick people in need of medical attention are being turned away from Zimbabwe’s hospitals and clinics.
The withdrawal of maternity services at Harare and Parirenyatwa Hospitals means that healthy women requiring elective and emergency caesarean sections, and unable to afford private health care, will needlessly die in child birth. In the absence of specialist care tens of women could be victims of maternal mortality each weak due to the absence of a specialist response to complications.
The failure of the public health system is paralleled by private health care whose cost, now charged in US dollars, has skyrocketed beyond the reach of the majority of Zimbabweans.
Health workers protest
On 18 November 2008 health workers from Harare Central and Parirenyatwa Hospitals protested against the state of the public health system. These health workers have continued to attempt to deliver health services in extremely difficult circumstances and planned to march to the offices of the Minister of Health and Child Welfare at Kaguvi Building to present a petition calling for urgent action to be taken to restore accessible and affordable health care to Zimbabwe’s population.
Heavily armed riot police prevented the group from proceeding further than Leopold Takawira Street outside of Parirenyatwa Hospital where they had gathered at 8am. The group then held their protest within the grounds of Parirenyatwa Hospital for 4 hours before riot police entered the hospital grounds at 11:45am and forcibly dispersed them, assaulting several health workers in the process.
Closure of the University of Zimbabwe Medical School
The Medical School of the University of Zimbabwe was closed indefinitely on 17 November 2008. It became impossible to continue to teach medical students in non-functioning health institutions. It will not be possible to reopen the medical school or to provide quality training of health professionals for Zimbabwe’s health system until the issues that have lead to its collapse are addressed.
Cholera Outbreak
The cholera outbreak in the country remains the cause of hundreds of preventable deaths with the disease having spread within Harare’s suburbs, Mashonaland Central, East and West and Matabeleland South. Thirty-six deaths were confirmed over just two days in Beitbridge this past weekend.
Failure to contain and manage the outbreak is the result of inadequate supply of safe drinking water and broken down sanitation systems that often leave residents surrounded by flowing raw sewage despite ad hoc financial intervention by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and deployment of the Civil Protection Unit to attend to these issues.
Call to Action
ZADHR calls for the following urgent action to be taken:
- The government should declare the cholera outbreak a national disaster and solicit international support to bring it under control and restore supply of safe water and sanitation systems to Zimbabwe’s population.
- Measures should be taken to provide adequate medical supplies, drugs and equipment to Zimbabwe’s hospitals and clinics. While long term sustainable measures are ultimately required, there is a need for urgent interim assistance to restore functionality to Zimbabwe’s health system.
- The Government must guarantee quality for health professionals and to ensure that conditions in which these skills can be retained are put in place (including adequate remuneration and safe working conditions).
Bloggers, please help get the word out about the full truth of the health crisis in Zimbabwe. If you'd like to call in and live blog eyewitness reports from Zimbabwean health professionals in Harare today, here's how to call in.