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Doctors’ Strike Leaves Some Zimbabweans ‘Gathering Here in Pain’ – The Zimbabwean

Posted on 6th October 2019 by TSA Press

The Harare resident said she had been referred to Parirenyatwa General Hospital, the capital’s largest medical center, “but there is no help. We are just gathering here in pain, in shame and in agony.”

An untold number of Zimbabweans have been turned away from public medical facilities since Sept. 3, when just more than 500 junior doctors, paid less than $200 a month, went on strike, demanding better wages as well as equipment and supplies for treating patients.

Hundreds of senior doctors with the same complaints joined the strike Thursday, further diminishing treatment options in the southern African country of 14 million.

Government offer rejected

On Friday, labor groups representing the doctors rejected the government’s offer of a 60% salary increase. It would have been paid in Zimbabwe’s devalued currency and not the U.S. dollars that the doctors sought.

“They’re asking the government to match their salaries with what they were earning” before the country’s economic collapse, explained Dr. Fortune Nyamande, spokesman for the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights. His group does not represent labor nor is it involved in negotiations, but Nyamande was apprised of Friday’s developments.

The government has threatened to withhold the pay of striking doctors. Dr. Paulinus Sikosana, chairman of its Health Services Board, said it won’t pay someone who won’t work.

The World Health Organization’s representative to Zimbabwe, Dr. Alex Gasasira, encouraged negotiations between the striking doctors and the government.

“We hear that many patients are being turned away, some of them with very serious conditions,” Gasasira said in a phone interview. “So we are concerned that the most vulnerable people … would not be able to access the services that they would require.”

An ailing health system

The strike has paralyzed the public health system.

“We know that something terrible is happening. We are hearing of pregnant women dying, victims of road traffic accidents dying,” Nyamande said, adding that he doubts the accuracy of government statistics on health and mortality.

Zimbabweans such as Mbofana gauge the health system based on personal experience.

Her back hurts and her prospects are poor. Turned away from public health care, “I was advised to go and seek treatment from private clinics or surgeons,” Mbofana said. “But how do I raise the money?”

Patients admitted into public hospitals before the strike have no guarantee of quality care, either, given gaps in staffing and shortages of medical equipment, such as diagnostic tools, surgical gloves and pain medicine.

A woman who identified herself only as Kukuwe said her sister’s health is worsening while at Parirenyatwa.

“No doctors are coming to see patients,” Kukuwe said. “The patients are stranded and are not receiving help because there are no doctors to write prescriptions.”

Doctor in care

Senior doctors last month had joined their junior counterparts in demonstrating for the release of Peter Magombeyi, who had led the strike as acting president of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association. He allegedly had been abducted from his home Sept. 14, resurfacing several days later outside of Harare, dazed and in pain. He initially told VOA in a phone interview that he remembered “being electrocuted at some point.”

The group Human Rights Watch says it has confirmed at least 50 abductions of activists and government critics so far this year.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration and Zimbabwe police have denied any involvement in Magombeyi’s disappearance.

Zimbabwe police had blocked Magombeyi from leaving a Harare private hospital but ultimately heeded a high court’s order to allow the doctor to seek care in South Africa. He reportedly is being treated at an undisclosed medical facility there.

Rutendo Mawere reported for VOA’s English to Africa Service from Harare. Gibbs Dube of VOA’s Zimbabwe Service reported from Washington.

Post published in: Featured

There are days when ‘my husband and I don’t eat at all’ – The Zimbabwean

Posted on 5th October 2019 by TSA Press

In eastern Zimbabwe’s parched Buhera district, Omega Kufakunesu’s family has been forced to scale down daily meals to just a portion of vegetables and sadza, a thick maize-meal porridge.

In the morning only the children get the porridge, and everyone skips lunch.

“During the day we have wild fruit collected by the children, and at night we have smaller portions of sadza with vegetables,” harvested from the communal village garden, said Kufakunesu, sitting outside her thatched round hut.

A palmful of shumha, a drought-resistant wild fruit, is all she will eat during the day until dinner time.

“We have reduced our food portions so that its enough for everyone,” she said.

But there are days when “my husband and I don’t eat at all” to make sure the children have some food, she said.

Zimbabwe is experiencing one of the worst droughts in history, blamed on the effects of the El Nino weather cycle.

In addition, the former regional breadbasket is in the throes of its worst economic crisis in a decade with inflation estimated to be over 900 percent.

‘More hungry people than ever’

Because of the combined effect of drought and an ailing economy, more than five million rural Zimbabweans, nearly a third of the population, are going to face food shortages before the next harvest in 2020.

A disturbing feature of this year’s food shortages is the increase in the number urban poor who are vulnerable.

The government estimates that up to 2.2 million people in towns and cities are struggling to feed themselves.

WFP country representative Eddie Rowe said there are “more hungry people than ever before in Zimbabwe”.

In August, the United Nations extended its appeal for aid – from $234m February to $331m to feed the combined total of over seven million Zimbabweans, roughly half the country’s population.

Buhera is home to around 300 000 people and experiences dry spells even during good rainy seasons. It is one of the areas hardest hit by the drought.

To make matters worse, it was in the path of Cyclone Idai which devastated Mozambique and parts of eastern Zimbabwe earlier this year.

‘Bartering wire mesh for food’

According to the UN, most of Zimbabwe’s 60 districts will have exhausted their staple maize stocks by October.

The Kufakunesu family and neighbouring villagers have been lucky to have boreholes to draw water for drinking, washing and watering the garden – but the water is drying up due to the heat and scanty rain.

The UN’s World Food Programme has been handing out food parcels – cooking oil and porridge for children under five – and US$8 in cash per month for every family member. But the payouts are only restricted to the so-called lean months.

At Joni, a neighbouring village, 49-year-old Fungai Mugombe, one of three wives and a mother of seven, used the money set up a simple wire mesh making project.

“People buy the mesh wire for fencing, and we make a small profit. I sometimes exchange the fences with food,” Mugombe said outside a cluster of huts where a red bougainvillea adds colour to a bleak dusty landscape.

Freeman Mavhiza, the district administrator, said the government was providing villagers with irrigation facilities and seed for drought resistant crops such as millet and sorghum.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said the government had budgeted $120m for the production of “strategic crops, such as maize, soya beans and cotton”.

Post published in: Business