More woes as Zimbabwe health costs double

Published Apr 11, 2006

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Harare - Zimbabwe has lifted a freeze on private health care charges, the official Herald newspaper said on Tuesday, allowing fees to double in a move likely to add to the woes of Zimbabweans grappling with soaring inflation.

From April 1, general practitioners' consultation fees have gone up by 100 percent to $58 (about R360), the paper said, adding that specialist physician fees have also been doubled.

Zimbabwe's health sector is among those hardest hit by a deepening economic crisis widely blamed on President Robert Mugabe's mismanagement, and showing itself in perennial shortages of foreign currency, food and fuel as well as constant water and electricity cuts.

"I do not want to kill the private sector. I want it to thrive so that it can complement the public health sector," Herald quoted Health Minister David Parirenyatwa as saying in justifying the price hike.

It follows a raft of basic commodity price hikes over the weekend in response to a sharp jump in inflation, now the highest in the world.

Parirenyatwa was not immediately available for comment.

Official figures released last week showed inflation vaulted to 913,6 percent in the year to March, triggering a 60 percent jump in the cost of bread for struggling urban dwellers whose salaries have failed to keep up with soaring costs.

The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe says an average family of five requires at least 35-million Zimbabwe dollars every month but an average middle class citizen earns just 15 million.

Political and economic analysts say many urban Zimbabweans have so far survived the country's long-running economic crisis through wheeling and dealing and through subsidies from relatives abroad who send money for groceries.

Private hospitals and doctors, who still offer far better service than the country's run-down government hospitals which are chronically short of drugs and trained staff, had wanted to hike fees by up to 240 percent.

Government doctors and nurses have staged a number of strikes over the last seven years to press for better pay, while thousands others have moved to neighbouring countries and further abroad in search of greener pastures.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, rejects charges he has misruled Zimbabwe and blames its economic woes largely on sabotage by his opponents in retaliation for controversial land reforms that has seen white-owned farmland forcibly redistributed among blacks.

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