Opposition Labour, Economists and Afrikan Democrats (LEAD) president, Linda Masarira, has told Zimbabwe’s Health and Child Care Minister, Constantino Chiwenga that he has been a great disappointment as a health minister.
In a letter seen by Pindula News, Masarira challenged Chiwenga who is also the Vice President to turn around the country’s disintegrating medical care.
Her remarks come when South Africa’s Limpopo provincial Member of the Executive (MEC) for health, Phophi Ramathuba refused to discharge a Zimbabwean patient who had failed to pay bills. Ramathuba also told the patient to get treatment in Zimbabwe saying South Africa had no resources to cater for foreigners.
Reads Masarira’s letter dated 24 August 2022:
Dear VP Chiwenga
It is with a heavy heart that I pen this letter (to) your esteemed office. I have tried several times through your PA to get an appointment to meet with you and discuss the debilitating state of our public health institutions in Zimbabwe. Considering how Zimbabweans danced, ululated and praised you during the restore legacy era, you have been a great disappointment to their expectations, especially in the healthcare delivery sector which you are also the Minister.
Government has failed to ensure people’s right to access to affordable, quality and basic health care in government hospitals. Most if not all public hospitals lack basic antibiotics, painkillers and chronic diseases medication. Considering that the Ministry of Health gets at least 15% of the national budget, it is perplexing how the ministry of health has continously failed to provide quality healthcare to the people of Zimbabwe. It is time that the budget allocation for the Ministry of Health works to revive the ailing health sector and to have audited statements of the same funds availed publicly for people to see how the funds are used. A life lost can never be reincarnated, sadly our people are dying prematurely everyday because government hospitals which should provide healthcare for all is failing to do so yet we have a whole ministry with a constitutional mandate to ensure that the right to healthcare is upheld in this country.
Basic health care is now a luxury and privy to an elite few yet it is a basic right as promulgated in the Bill of rights of the supreme law of the land.
