Health Issues in Zimbabwe

I haven’t been in Zimbabwe very long, but I already have a feel for how frustrating it is to deal with the medical system.  (I hope I stay healthy while I’m here!)  I thought I would give you a few examples:  

• A colleague was called because one of the boarding school students she supports financially had been taken to the hospital with a high fever.  It turned out to be a simple infection, but the hospital didn’t have a basic antibiotic that was needed to treat it, so my colleague ended up getting the medication in Harare and taking it to the hospital the next day.
• Monday of last week, a 57-year-old woman went to her local health clinic with a high fever.  The staff wanted to test her for malaria, but didn’t have a quick test kit, so they sent her home.  The next evening she was taken by family to the nearest hospital because she was much worse.  There they tested her for malaria, got the positive result, and were about to start an IV treatment when she died.
•  A colleague who trains lab technicians to do microscopic examination of urine, stools, etc. for diagnostic purposes went to a nearby high school in a relatively rural area and asked to get urine samples from students who have observable blood in their urine so that her students could practice looking for schistosomiasis, a parasitic condition that often develops into a chronic illness that can damage internal organs and, in children, impair growth and cognitive development.  More than half of the high school students asked acknowledged having blood in their urine, and we can only expect a higher prevalence in elementary school.  She’s now trying to find money to get the medications needed to treat these students.
• A pregnant student came to the attention of faculty because she was having fainting spells.  Her hemoglobin was checked, and was 6 (11 is the bottom of the normal range, if I remember correctly).  Then began a two-day search for a bottle of iron (ferrous sulfate) to treat her anemia.  Someone finally found an unopened bottle which was outdated early in 2010, and she is taking that in hopes that it is still good enough to help her condition.

It must be very frustrating to everyone, both patients and staff, to work in a system without basic necessities.  There is no early detection with simple tests like Pap smears, and conditions that are not debilitating can go on for years without being diagnosed or treated, even when the consequences of failing to treat them can include major organ failure and death.  The system is particularly overwhelmed with the needs of the population with HIV/AIDS, now estimated to infect 15% of the population and to cause over 140,000 deaths a year in Zimbabwe.   There is further fallout from the losses due to HIV/AIDS:  half the population is under the age of 15, and there are many children who are being raised by members of their extended families or in orphanages under not so good circumstances because their parents have died or been disabled by HIV/AIDS.