Zimbabwe Health System In Jeopardy

 

Zimbabwe’s deepening economic crisis is severely affecting the government’s ability to fund public health delivery and restricting poor people’s access to health care, economists, government officials and health experts agree.

The economy had shown signs of modest improvement under the government of national unity (GNU) between 2009 and 2013, when President Robert Mugabe and his long-ruling ZANU-PF party shared power with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). But industry has been performing poorly and company closures have picked up since ZANU-PF won general elections in July 2013.

“It is not surprising that people’s right to health has been compromised by the state of the economy,” John Robertson, an independent economist based in Harare, told IRIN. “Health services are suffering a funding deficit because of the current economic crisis, which has worsened in the post-GNU period.”

As more people have been pushed into joblessness or working in the informal economy, the country’s tax base has dwindled and government is struggling to collect sufficient revenue to pay for public programmes and civil servants’ salaries, said Robertson.

Ruth Labode, a medical doctor who heads the parliamentary committee on health and is a member of parliament for the MDC, said that not only had government allocated too little to health in its 2014 national budget, but it was failing to fund that budget.

Cabinet allocated the health sector US$330 million (down from $407 in 2013), which amounted to 8 percent of the 2014 budget, while public hospitals were given $25 million for operations even though, by January of this year, they owed various suppliers $33 million.