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Deteriorating health system in Zimbabwe underreported
Extracted from Media Update 2008/22
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
August 10, 2008

The official media provided piecemeal reports on the acute economic and health problems plaguing the country. This was highlighted by their inadequate coverage of the recent outbreak of diarrhoea in some eastern suburbs of Harare after the authorities failed to provide them with treated clean water for almost a month.

The Herald (4/8), for example, merely reported Harare's Health Services Department Director, Dr Stanley Mungofa, confirming the occurrence of "pockets of high incident of diarrhoeal diseases" without independently establishing the extent of the problem nor asking him to say when the disease broke out.

Further, the paper did not quiz the authorities on how they planned to address the causes of the water shortages, said to be lack of water treatment chemicals, power cuts and "increased " water demand. It passively cited Mungofa advising residents against "fetching water from unprotected wells and polluted streams", adding that but if forced to, they should use "disinfecting tablets" collected from "disinfecting points established by his department". The paper did not provide information where these centres were, why the authorities had not already distributed the sterilising tablets to the affected areas and whether they had enough stocks to satisfy demand.

The government media's docility also replicated itself in their coverage of the economic decline. They restricted themselves to reporting indicators of economic decay such as the severe commodity shortages and the galloping cost of living in isolation of government's culpability in the matter.

These reports formed part of the 63 stories the government media carried on the subject.

Meanwhile, the private media recorded several indicators of economic decline and blamed poor government policies for the problems in their 38 reports on the topic. They argued that unless government addressed the root causes of the crisis like lack of production and the current bad international image, the country's economic woes would persist.

In addition, they reported the outbreak of diarrhoea in Harare, blaming it on prevalent water shortages. ZimDaily (7/8), for example, traced the problem to government's transfer of water and sewer management to ZINWA, which it argued lacks capacity to deliver.

Figs 3 and 4 show the sourcing patterns on ZBC and the private papers.

Fig 3: Voice distribution on ZBC

Fig 4: Voice distribution in the private Press

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