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Zimbabwe's medical school closes
Radio VOP
November 20, 2008

The Zimbabwe Medical School of the University of Zimbabwe has been closed indefinitely.

"It became impossible to continue to teach medical students in non-functioning health institutions. It will not be possible to re-open 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," said the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR).

This follows the closure of the country's main referral hospitals - Harare Central Hospital and Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare as well as Mpilo Hospital and United Bulawayo Hospitals in Bulawayo. District hospitals and municipal clinics around the country were barely functioning or closed.

(ZADHR) said the virtually collapse of the health system was a violation of the health rights of Zimbabweans.
"The country'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," it said.

"Sick people in need of medical attention are being turned away from Zimbabwe's hospitals and clinics," said the group.

The situation had made it virtually impossible for health care workers to execute their duties properly, resulting in deaths.

"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," said the doctors group.

ZADHR took part in a protest organised by health workers from Harare Central and Parirenyatwa Hospitals on Tuesday protesting against the state of the public health system.

The health workers had 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 before the protest was brutally broken by heavily armed police details.

ZADHR also called on the government to declare the cholera outbreak a national disaster, provide adequate medical supplies to hospitals and clinics and put in place immediate measures to return the few medical professionals left in the country.

A decade of political turmoil in Zimbabwe plus an unprecedented recession marked by the world's highest inflation rate of 231 million percent, has hastened the deterioration of key infrastructure needed for economic activity and public health such as adequate power and water supplies.

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