Zimbabwe

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Our trip is nearly at an end. Hard to believe we’ve been in country for 10 days already. On one hand, the time has flown by. On the other, feels like we’ve been here forever. It’ll be good to start home tomorrow. Another 23 hours on airplanes!

We survived this morning’s flight on Air Zimbabwe from Bulawayo back to Harare. This flight was much less eventful than the last. Boring is always good when on an aircraft. Flying over the country is disheartening. The land is brown in most areas, and in others, black due to grass fires. You see little green, just a few trees here and there. There are many streams and river beds throughout the country, but all appear to be completely dry – just dirt and clay. You can see dozens of large areas that have been cleared for planting at some time. Unfortunately, the land has not been prepared. There is no fuel for tractors to plow the fields, no seeds to plant, no fertilizer, no water for irrigation. We’re told this used to be the bread-basket of Africa, but for multiple reasons, little will be grown this year, contributing to the food crisis here. During the day, we visited one of the two public hospitals in Harare. This one is the largest hospital in all of Zimbabwe, and people are referred to it from all over the country. The hospital covers a huge area, and has over 1000 beds and in normal times a staff of over 3000 people. Today, this hospital closed its doors. It is accepting zero patients – no admissions, no quick consultations for minor illnesses, no trauma patients, no child vaccinations, no women in labor, none of the growing number of cholera cases. Nothing. They still have some patients in the wards, and they are caring for those folks the best they can until they can discharge them. The hospital closed because it has minimal to zero drugs and medical supplies. It’s staff can’t get to work because the cost of transport exceeds the amount the can withdraw daily from the bank. In order to get the money, they have to stand in line all day. In some instances, the amount of round-trip transport exceeds their monthly wage. This includes staff at all levels, from the janitor to doctors at the hospital. The few folks they have live near and can walk to work. The doctors are leaving as they are tired of being unable to treat people and seeing them die. During the discussion, the staff also talked about how people die and no one comes to claim their body. Families don’t have money to pay for funeral arrangements. The family "disappears" if the patient dies. The hospital announces names of the deceased on the radio for 3 weeks straight to try to get the family to come and claim the body, but if they don’t then the hospital has to arrange burial. Apparently, this can happen in hundreds of instances in a month. The hospital can’t deal with this either. They also talked of babies (sometimes older children) that are simply abandoned at the hospital. The staff then needs to treat the child if it’s ill, and then try to find a home for him or her. This adds one more depressing burden to the staff here.

Sorry for all the depressing stuff today, but can you imagine if the largest hospital in your city decided today to not open? No advance warning, just stop operating, and turn people who show up at its doors away, regardless of the severity of the issue? That’s what happened today. Worse, we drove by the other large referral hospital in the city, and it was dark and had an empty parking lot too. We didn’t stop and check, but we believe they are closed as well.

Time to go finish packing the suitcase and putting a few things together for our final day tomorrow. More general observations then!