“The only source of revenue at the 14 hospitals in my province is user fees. The announcement to slash fees was a political statement because what is happening on the ground is different,” Zizhou said.
Earlier this year, Madzorera announced the scrapping of maternity user fees in all rural public hospitals under the Health Transition Fund. He further promised that the removal of the fees would extend to urban health institutions. Zizhou described the budget that his province got from the Treasury this year as peanuts.
“We were initially allocated $2,7 million under the 2013 budget by the Treasury but it was cut down to $1,1 million. What has been released so far is $759,000 (69 percent) in three disbursements so how am I supposed to remove user fees?” he asked.
Zizhou said if well prioritised, HTF had the potential to improve maternal and child healthcare.
The national maternal mortality ratio, according to a 2010-2011 Demographic and Health Survey, is 960 deaths per 100,000 live births. Zizhou said that in Mashonaland East it is only 130 deaths per 100,000 births.
In terms of medical staff, Zizhou said out of the 14 hospitals all positions are full and there was an ambulance at every health institution.
“I have a full establishment of 4,000 medical staff across all grades, with 50 doctors and about 95 percent of nurses. The other five percent I cannot employ as there is no space to accommodate them,” he said.
HTF was set up in 2011 by the government with the support from the government of Canada, The European Union, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom and UN partner agencies.
A 4 million Euros grant was signed in 2011 by the partners to steer the HTF programmes. In addition to this allocation, the EU has invested approximately $56 million in Zimbabwe over the previous three years.
HTF’s main focus is to help increase both access to and quality of services for mothers, babies and children through training more midwives, retaining health professionals, making available essential medicines and equipment and eliminating user fees to achieve Millennium Development Goals 1c, 4, 5 and 6.
Post published in: News