Only 18 districts in the country have so far benefited from the Health Transition Fund pilot initiative to remove the fees that are considered a barrier to sustainable access to prenatal health care by women.
The HTF was launched last year by the government in partnership with UNICEF and international donors, to reduce the country’s high maternal and child death rates.
Zimbabwe is one of the African countries that adopted the Campaign for Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality in Africa last year. The campaign challenged leaders to treat the issue of maternal health as urgent.
However, Minister of Health and Child Welfare Henry Madzorera told The Zimbabwean they were yet to discuss the matter.
“We are going to have a clear position on whether women will have access to free antenatal services or not at the end of this month. We will have a meeting with various stakeholders and come up with a clear position on the way forward,” he said.
Madzore said they had failed to fully implement the scrapping of hospital user fees as the ministry was relying on international community aid to get the healthcare system back on track.
“If we removed the hospital fees last year it would have been disastrous. Such a process cannot be done overnight. We learnt a harsh lesson from Uganda, which removed hospital user fees 10 days before elections. The country ran out of resources,” said Madzore.
According to the National Aids Council‘s third quarter report, the number of women seeking antenatal services remained low, with 74 percent of women attending antenatal clinics against an annual target of 96 percent.
There has, however, been an outcry from women saying that hospital user fees remained unaffordable, forcing a significant number of women to deliver at home and expose themselves to health risks.
Registering for antenatal services at council clinics costs $20 while mission and government hospitals charge $50. United Nations Population Fund figures show that the maternal mortality ratio in Zimbabwe has worsened significantly over the past 20 years. On average, eight women die in labor each day in Zimbabwe.
This translates to about 725 women out of every 100,000 who give birth.
Post published in: News