The Observer - 2 March 2014 - 3
Hospital corruption angers Kariba residents
R
Correspondent
esidents
of
Nyamhunga
community in Kariba have
castigated
local
government
hospitals for failing to provide
basic medication for sick patients.
This is despite the Constitution of
Zimbabwe stating that every citizen and
permanent resident of Zimbabwe has the
right to have access to basic health-care
services, including reproductive health-care
services.
Speaking at a workshop in Kariba held by
Zimrights Thursday, residents said their local
hospitals were always short of drugs and
D
Jill Reilly
patients were being referred to pharmacies to
purchase their medication.
“We are bitter because we can’t even get
any medicines, even stop pain, in hospitals yet
these drugs are being sold in our communities
by some health-care givers,” said Patience
Gomo of Nyamunga.
“However we always see government
vehicles delivering medicines. Some of us
cannot afford to buy drugs from the pharmacy
which is causing loss of lives. Where is the 15
percent stated in the Abuja declaration which
says 15 percent of national budget has to go
towards healthcare.”
However, low budget disbursements have
impacted negatively on the operations of
public hospitals.
According to a report on post-2014 health
budget analysis by a local health think-thank,
Community
Working Group on Health, the health
budget allocation continues to dwindle since
2011, resulting in government failing to meet
demands in the sector.
The report revealed that since 2009,
the bulk of the Health ministry’s budget
went towards meeting wages, contrary to
international best practices of a ratio of 30:70
for wage and non-wage expenditures.
In the 2014 national budget the Health and
Child Care ministry got $337 million, which is
8.2 percent of the total budget allocation and
slightly less than what was allocated in 2013
(9.8 percent).
Government should seriously look into
this issue of refurbish dilapidated hospitals
which are riddled by obsolete medical
machines, dilapidated wards, peeling paint,
open electric sockets, hanging live wires, dirt,
a dire shortage of critical medical equipment,
shortage of personnel and medication.
This forms part of the unfortunate
description bedevilling the health sector in
Zimbabwe.■
Ex-Ukraine’s PM’s $20b loot
ocuments recovered
from an ornamental
lake at the extravagant
home of Ukraine’s
fugitive president are being dried
out in a sauna in a bid to uncover
some of the billions of dollars
purported to have gone missing
under his kleptocratic regime.
When Viktor Yanukovich fled
his sprawling luxury estate in
Mezhyhirya, an hours drive from
Kiev, hundreds of papers were
hurriedly thrown into the water to
destroy evidence.
But many were in plastic folders,
meaning some documents were
still legible and they are now being
closely analysed.
According to the Organised
Crime and Corruption Reporting
Project, which is one of the partners
in the voluntary investigation, they
have so far discovered the documents
include ‘receipts detailing his
[Yanukovich] extravagant spending,
financial investments, and lists of
press enemies.’
The people of the country,
who earn on average earn between
£2,400 and £4,200 a year, flocked
to see Viktor Yanukovich’s hastily
vacated property last weekend.
A group of volunteer divers
discovered the documents had been
hastily discarded and retrieved them
from the lake at the property which
is packed with riches well beyond
the reach of a man with an official
salary of less than £15,000.
Twenty journalists from a dozen
media outlets spent the weekend
sorting, separating, and drying the
soggy and clumped documents those that need to are being dried
out in the sauna of his guesthouse.
Almost 700 of the estimated
20,000 to 50,000 documents
recovered have already been posted
online. New documents are being
added every hour.
OCCRP partner Lavrov said:
‘Now we are occupying the site
of Yanukovych’s corruption and
investigating his wrong-doing…
That’s amazing.’
A statement published on
yanukovychleaks.org
reads:
‘Volunteer divers found nearly 200
folders of documents at a lake at
the residence of former president
Palatial: Ordinary Ukrainians were amazed to discover the riches their ousted president had amassed since coming to power
of Ukraine. They had been thrown
in the lake to destroy them as people
were escaping the compound.
‘A group of journalists and
activists has undertaken to rescue,
systematize and investigate the
enormous wealth of information
about the former owners