By MacDonald Dzirutwe
HARARE (Reuters) – When Zimbabwe’s wealthy and powerful fall ill, they often go abroad in search of the best treatment money can buy; Deposed President Robert Mugabe died in a hospital in Singapore in 2019.
With reduced travel by the coronavirus, this luxury is not available, exposing the elite to a truth that most have known for a long time: Zimbabwe’s health system has been disintegrating for years and is now struggling to cope with an increase in cases of COVID-19.
Anger among oppressed doctors is increasing public dissatisfaction with President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who promised an economic revival after taking over Mugabe after a coup in 2017.
“It is a rude awakening for the government and politicians,” said Norman Matara, secretary general of the Association of Doctors for Human Rights in Zimbabwe.
“If you have decades of continuous destruction of the public health system and now have a pandemic, you cannot reverse that decay … in a year or six months.”
Zimbabwe’s economy was in crisis even before the coronavirus attacked, after years of hyperinflation, acute currency shortages and power cuts.
Now you must deal with the growing pandemic. More than half of the 32,646 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe and two-thirds of its 1,160 deaths were recorded in January alone, according to a Reuters count.
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga said on Friday that more transmissible variants of COVID-19 are likely to be circulating in Zimbabwe and that the government is investigating.
He said a stricter one-month blockade, which was reintroduced on January 2, and includes a curfew from dusk to dawn and land borders closing, would be extended for another two weeks.
Among those who died in the past few days were two ministers, a retired general and other high-ranking officials. The two ministers were treated at a private clinic.
A government spokesman sparked controversy on social media this week when he suggested in a tweet that the deaths of ruling party officials may have been the work of “medical killers”.
He has since apologized and deleted his tweets after health professionals pointed out that they had been risking their lives for months to treat patients without adequate protective equipment, ventilators and other vital supplies.
‘MASK UP, STAY AT HOME’
The government says it is doing the best it can with limited resources in an economy that has been in recession since 2019.
Agnes Mahomva, national coordinator for task force COVID-19, told Reuters that Zimbabwe was equipped to deal with the second wave and that the government was emphasizing prevention after tightening blocking rules earlier this month.
“We expected this increase because people relaxed. Our hospitals are adequately prepared to serve patients, but we continue to say ‘mask and stay at home’. It is the best way to beat COVID-19,” said Mahomva.
The country of 15 million inhabitants has 84 ventilators operating in public hospitals and 1,049 beds for COVID-19 patients in private and public institutions, according to data from the Ministry of Health.
In the Parirenyatwa Hospital Group, the country’s largest COVID-19 center with 97 beds, there are two beds in the intensive care unit and the hospital is almost full, said Rashida Ferrand, an epidemiologist and doctor at the hospital.
The better-equipped private hospitals have less than 15% of the national bed capacity and charge at least $ 2,000 to admit patients with COVID-19.
Some desperate Zimbabweans resorted to social media in search of hospital beds and ventilators for sick relatives.
DESPAIR
The two cabinet ministers and the retired army general, who died of COVID-19, were buried on Wednesday after being declared national heroes for their role in the 1970s liberation war.
Chiwenga told a crowd of about 300 people at their joint funeral that the virus was cruel.
“COVID-19 taught us an important lesson, that we are all mortal. It makes no distinction between the powerful and the weak, the privileged and the destitute, those who have and those who don’t,” said Chiwenga, who wore a mask and facial shield.
He is also Zimbabwe’s minister of health and has made several trips to China in the past 18 months due to an unspecified illness.
“It is a relentless steamroller that leaves a trail of despair and despair,” said Chiwenga, adding that vaccine implantation plans will be announced shortly.
Health professionals at the forefront of fighting coronavirus say they are demoralized with low wages and a lack of protective equipment.
Enoch Dongo, president of the Zimbabwe Nurses’ Association, said that most nurses worked up to 12 hours in shifts without gloves, medical scrubs or safety shoes and only a single surgical mask.
“Psychologically, mentally and physically, nurses are traumatized as we speak now, because they are watching patients die in their care (and) … some of them are preventable deaths,” said Dongo.
“It is a warning to everyone, to politicians, to the people of Zimbabwe and to the business community, that we need to invest in our healthcare system because … now, with COVID-19, no one can travel outside the country.”
(Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo and Mike Collett-White)