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Zim denies new mortality reports
The
Daily Mirror (Zimbabwe)
April
10, 2006
http://www.dailymirror.co.zw/dailymirror/view_news.cfm?
THE GOVERNMENT
yesterday denied international media reports that the average life
expectancy for Zimbabwean women had dropped from 36 years in 2004
to 34 this year.
Minister of
Health and Child Welfare, David Parirenyatwa, said the reports —
which attributed their information to the World
Health Organisation (WHO)’s 2006 World Health Report — were
false.
"Those
reports are false. There is nothing like that. Phone the WHO representative
and he will tell you it’s not true," Parirenyatwa said, without
elaborating.
Efforts to get
a comment from the United Nations’ health arm yesterday were, however,
fruitless, as there was no one picking up calls to their offices.
The media reports
said the high mortality was a result of current economic challenges
in the country.
According to
the reports, the average life expectancy at birth of males in Zimbabwe
remained at 37 while that for women went down to 34 from 36 in 2004.
The reports
further said Zimbabwe and Swaziland were among the countries worst
affected by the HIV pandemic on the continent.
The average
life expectancy was reportedly less than half of the 82-year life
span in Japan, which was placed at the top of the table together
with San Marino and Monaco.
According to
a press release posted on the WHO website on April 7, a health workforce
crisis in 57 counties is having a deadly impact on their ability
to fight disease and improve health.
"More than
four million additional doctors, nurses, midwives, managers and
public health workers are urgently needed to fill the gap in these
57 countries, 36 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa,’’ the report
said.
WHO Director-General
Lee Jong-wook was quoted saying: "The global population is
growing, but the number of health workers is stagnating or even
falling in many of the places where they are needed most.
"Across
the developing world, health workers face economic hardships, deteriorating
infrastructure and social unrest. In many countries, the HIV and
Aids epidemic has also destroyed the health and lives of health
workers."
There was, also
on the WHO website, a research carried out in Manicaland between
1998 and 2003. The report, titled ‘Assessing Adult Mortality in
HIV Afflicted Zimbabwe (1998-2003)’ was released last month in a
WHO bulletin Volume 84-No.3.
That article
sought to relate HIV prevalence to mortality in Zimbabwe, but did
not mention economic hardships as directly related to mortality
rates in the country.
"Overall,
HIV positive men and women had mortality rates 8.6 and 10.2 times
higher respectively than those who were HIV negative. Sixty-one
percent of mortality in males and 70 percent adult females can be
attributed to HIV.
"However,
the current results do suggest that reduction in HIV-associated
mortality achieved through the use of antiretroviral therapy for
example could have a major impact on general mortality patterns,"
read part of the research findings. Zimbabwe’s HIV infection rate
has actually fallen in recent years to around a fifth of the population,
apparently due to increased condom use and sexual abstinence.
But the population
of some 12.5 million still has one of the world’s higher HIV prevalence
rates, and more than half the infections and deaths strike women.
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