Poison, beatings and roadblocks challenge medics

BY STAFF REPORTER

HARARE

Without equipment or drugs, threatened by police and militia and faced with horrific injuries to care for, medical staff in Zimbabwe have emerged heroes, according to a human rights lawyer.

Political violence produced thousands of people with serious injuries who needed urgent medical attention, but, recounted the lawyer in the British Medical Journal, most doctors and nurses had left the country to work elsewhere, leaving less than a quarter capacity. Most hospitals had no drugs or other forms of treatment because of the economic situation.

Medical staff at various rural district hospitals and mission hospitals around the country were prohibited from admitting victims of political. Nevertheless, doctors and nurses risked their lives to help victims of political violence.

Hospitals were also prohibited from sending their ambulances to retrieve seriously injured people in rural areas. Many of the victims of political violence required specialised medical care that could only be offered in Harare, where all the country’s orthopaedic specialists and x-ray machines were located.

Zanu (PF) militia set up informal road-blocks to search vehicles for victims of violence and turn back ambulances. Ordinarily, ambulances are not stopped or searched at routine police road traffic checkpoints. However, from April 5, police were instructed to stop all ambulances and ensure that no victims of political violence were transported to urban areas for better care.

Medical staff were victims of political violence themselves. Reports of assault of medical staff came from several hospitals, including All Souls in Mutoko, Nyadire in Mutoko, Driefontein in Mvuma, and Murambinda in Buhera.

The true heroes, says the report, were rural district hospital medical staff across the country, who were going to extraordinary lengths to attend to victims.

“I recently met a doctor who had travelled from a distant rural district hospital to Harare, at his expense, to seek vital drugs for his patients, who were victims of political violence. Another doctor drove five nurses who had been seriously assaulted by Zanu (PF) militia to Harare at night to get them medical attention. Some doctors advise their victims to indicate that they have been injured in non-political circumstances such as falling down, so that they could be admitted,” said the report’s author.

Perhaps the greatest challenge to medical staff in Zimbabwe arose when Zanu (PF) militia started using poison to assault their victims. In Chiweshe, Zanu militia beat people with tree branches dipped in paraquat, a herbicide that burns the skin and is highly corrosive. Some of the victims were later forced to drink the paraquat.