Zimbabwe hospitals near collapse

Telegraph:

The public hospitals of Zimbabwe, once a model for Africa, have become waiting rooms for death.

A doctor at one of the country's five central hospitals - the biggest and supposedly best equipped health care centres in the country - laid bare the desperate state of the system.

"Patients are dying of things like dehydration - in a hospital," he said.

Neither the doctor nor his institution can be identified for fear of reprisals. During the interview, held in the back seat of a car, he looked around to check for observers at least a dozen times.

"We no longer have a system. Now it's beyond any form of help," he said, citing the example of a young girl admitted after a falling rock crushed her thigh and broke her shin.

"I couldn't clean the wound except with tap water. She needed surgery but there were no anaesthetic drugs.

"After three days we could operate but by that time gangrene had set in. We had no antibiotics and ended up amputating her leg. She is a 10-year-old girl." He shook his head sadly.

He listed some of the items his hospital has run out of: penicillin, insulin, painkillers, bandages, hydrogen peroxide, gauze, plaster, X-ray film, sterile gloves, surgical blades and intravenous fluids.

"Most of the staff have left. Some emergencies like appendicitis are no longer emergencies. We have got to the stage where with any condition not deemed life threatening, we are not operating," he said.

Patients have to wait for hours to see a doctor and must buy all their own medical supplies. If they cannot pay they cannot be treated, he said, pointing out that the first litre of intravenous fluids and a set of equipment to administer it costs Z$1.5million - half a civil servant's monthly salary.

"Every ward round you do you record 'patient is severely dehydrated, patient needs fluids, patient can't afford fluids'. You are literally watching patients die in your hands of correctable illnesses."

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The government cannot pay to import supplies. Bob's printing press doesn't have enough paper and ink to print his way out of this mess and the rest of the world is forced to watch this slow strangulation and show "proper respect" for Zimbabwe's "sovereignty." Is this where the treaty of Westphalia has led us? Is this where the UN watches "human rights" starve? Did the British ever treat people in what is now Zimbabwe this badly?