Citizens decry hefty consultation fees at private medical centers
The Zimbabwean population is faced with yet another silent crisis in the form of hefty consultation and treatment fees that are now being charged by private clinics. With the collapse of public health most public and council hospitals and clinics can no longer treat patients. The doctors and nurses are demotivated due to low salaries and even when they want to work, they lack the required PPE and tools/equipment to do the work. Compounding the problem is the lack of drugs at these centres forcing the patients to seek medical care in privately run clinics.
Doctors and nurses have engaged in job action on several occasions in order to get the Health and  Child Care Ministry to take steps to remedy the situation but to no avail. Influential medical doctors have even run a hashtag #FixOurHealthCareSystem all to no avail. Some Zimbabweans have had to skip the border into South Africa to access affordable quality health services.
https://twitter.com/_mandy_cee/status/1576940263695470592?s=19
With consultation fees alone at private health centres ranging from $30-$60, specialists are making a killing whilst Zimbabwean citizens suffer in silence. It is worse for those in civil service who are still earning RTGS as the centres charge their fees using the prevailing black market rates.
My friend and her hubby run a medical practice in Harare. On an average day, they make USD1 000 in consultation fees. Multiply that by 25 days. There are people making serious money in Zimbabwe.
— Spiritual Intelligence (@Iam_Nadiah) May 24, 2022
The situation keeps deteriorating but the authorities don't seem worried about it.
Zimbabwe’s biggest hospital doesn’t have paracetamol painkillers.
All of Zimbabwe’s 3 central hospitals in Harare only have 9 working dialysis machines, as a result Zimbabweans with kidney disease are dying.
Yet here are Zimbabwean oranges being sold today in Germany!
LOOTING! pic.twitter.com/wMorZMIVTb
— Hopewell Chin’ono (@daddyhope) September 30, 2022
Patients are dying at public institutions without accessing essential services.
https://twitter.com/tee_marve/status/1575556514945077249?t=KrEVEASOw4cYU3gbQ9Y-2g&s=19
The inertia to take action that is on display at the Ministry of Health And Child Care is worrying. The health minister himself is on record for travelling to the East to seek medical treatment leaving the citizens on their own.
