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Zimbabwe
doctors' advice: Don't get sick
Angus
Shaw, Associated Press
September 01, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/31/news/Dying-Zimbabwe.php
Harare - The advice of
doctors to Zimbabweans is, don't get sick. If you do, don't count
on hospitals - they're short of drugs and functioning equipment.
As the economy collapses, the laboratory at a main 1,000-bed hospital
has virtually shut down. X-ray materials, injectable antibiotics
and anticonvulsants have run out. Emergency equipment is out of
action. Patients needing casts for broken bones need to bring their
own plaster. In a country with one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics,
medical staff lack protective gloves. Health authorities blame the
drying up of foreign aid under Western sanctions imposed to end
political and human-rights abuses under President Robert Mugabe.
A power-sharing agreement aimed at bringing the opposition into
the government could open the gates to foreign aid. But negotiations
have stalled over how much power rests with Mugabe.
Meanwhile, the economic
meltdown is evident in empty store shelves, long lines at gas stations
- and hospitals where elevators don't work and patients are carried
to upper wards in makeshift hammocks of torn sheets and blankets.
Jacob Kwaramba, an insurance clerk, brought his brother to Harare's
Parirenyatwa hospital, once the pride of health services in southern
Africa. Emergency-room doctors sent Kwaramba to a private pharmacy
to buy drugs for his brother's lung infection. He returned two hours
later to find his brother dead. "I couldn't believe it. It
wasn't a fatal illness," he said. Another family said a relative
dying of cancer was sent home, and no painkillers could be found.
Relatives abroad were able to pay for morphine, but by the time
import clearance was obtained, the man had died, the family said.
A report by
six independent Zimbabwean doctors indicates the scale of the collapse.
"Elective surgery has been abandoned in the central hospitals
and even emergency surgery is often dependent on the ability of
patients' relatives to purchase suture materials from private suppliers,"
it said. "Pharmacies stand empty and ambulances immobilized
for want of spare parts ... this is an unmitigated tragedy."
The doctors who compiled the six-page report withheld their names
because comments seen as critical of Mugabe are a punishable offence.
The independent Zimbabwe
Human Rights Forum said doctors and medical staff were chased
from rural clinics to keep them from helping opposition supporters,
while many city hospitals couldn't cope with the number of patients
injuries sustained in beatings and torture blamed mostly on militants
of Mugabe's party and police and soldiers. The opposition Movement
for Democratic Change says at least 200 of its backers died in the
violence, with thousands more beaten and left homeless.
No data is available
on how many lives have been lost because of the medical crisis,
but the report said hospital admissions declined sharply because
of the cost of treatment and transportation. In recent years, 70
percent of births took place in health facilities; now it's under
50 percent, the report said. It said a decade ago Zimbabwe had the
best health system in sub-Saharan Africa. The main Harare medical
school, once renowned for the quality of its graduates, has lost
60 percent of its complement of lecturers, and an unprecedented
30 percent of its students failed this year's final examinations.
The elite go for care abroad, mostly to South Africa, but also to
Asia. Mugabe regularly has checkups in Malaysia. But the doctors
said if there was a plane crash or similar disaster, victims who
might otherwise be saved by prompt and well-equipped care would
likely end up as "dead meat."
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