Zimbabwe’s healthcare system should be placed under international receivership, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
”We believe an emergency health system needs to be put in place,” said PHR CEO Frank Donaghue at the release of a report on findings made during a recent visit there.
”We recommend the entire health system … water, sanitation … be handed over to world receivership.”
He said public hospitals were closed because they did not have water or drugs. Healthcare workers could not get to work because they could not afford transport, and Zimbabweans seeking treatment had little access to the hospitals because they too had no transport money.
He said the United Nations was the appropriate authority for receivership. When there was a threat to survival, and which could affect the entire region, they could step in.
”So we would hold that the United Nations now has the power to step in and set in some type of system to take over the health system of Zimbabwe.”
The cholera epidemic was a symptom of the collapse of the entire health system, Donaghue said.
‘Put the nation of Zimbabwe first’
Meanwhile, prolonged bickering by Zimbabwe’s political leaders is exacerbating the nation’s economic woes, the chief justice of its high court said on Monday.
”Our political leaders should put aside their political differences, vendettas if any… and put the nation of Zimbabwe first,” the Judge, Rita Makarau, said at the launch of a new judicial year.
”As a result of the differences between our political leaders, the economy has been battered, and battered most severely.”
Zanu-PF leader Robert Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai signed a power-sharing deal in September aimed at defusing tensions and tackling Zimbabwe’s economic mess.
But they have so far failed to implement the pact, despite repeated interventions by regional leaders. Talks have stalled over the sharing of key Cabinet posts and other powerful government jobs.
Amid the political deadlock, Zimbabwe’s humanitarian crisis has deepened.
The country, already struggling against hyper-inflation and chronic food shortages, is battling a devastating cholera epidemic that has killed more than 1 800 people since August, according to the World Health Organisation figures.
The judiciary has not been spared from the economic crisis, Makarau said, with judges and prosecutors fleeing abroad in search of greener pastures.
”Our staff, faced with the ever-increasing cost of transport and diminishing earnings and access to cash, struggled to make it to the high court each day,” he said.
”We salute all those who have not resigned to date and continue to come to work in these hard times.”– Sapa, AFP