Zimbabwe’s health system continues to deteriorate, with hospitals lacking medicine, equipment and staff, and with frustrated patients turning to herbalists as an alternative – but often too late for help with diseases like cancer.
When Agnes Kativhu could not get treatment for breast cancer from Harare’s main public hospital, she checked into one of the many self-styled herbal clinics opening up across the country’s capital, where she was stayed for nearly a month.
“I was now well,” the 67-year-old told APF in a TimesLIVE report. “I never want to go back to the hospital because … they failed to give me a single tablet,” she said.
Unaccredited, unregulated and with unproven results, herbalists are in growing demand among Zimbabweans who feel let down by the crumbling government system.
The country’s largest public hospital, Parirenyatwa, has not had a functioning mammogram machine for 15 years. It does, however, have the only operating radiotherapy cancer treatment machine available to the general public in the entire country of nearly 17m people.
“We recognise that one machine is insufficient,” said Nothando Mutizira, head of oncology at Parirenyatwa. “However, we are managing to provide services with this single unit.”
Like other public hospitals struggling through Zimbabwe’s deep and enduring economic crisis, Parirenyatwa has barely any medicine, equipment or staff.
‘No drugs’
Some hospitals solicit donations of medicine and essential items like gloves and syringes.
“There are no drugs," said Simbarashe James Tafirenyika, president of Zimbabwe Municipalities Nurses and Allied Workers Union.
Even when a hospital has equipment, regular power outages put the machines out of service, he added.
Public hospitals are losing their staff to the growing private sector and countries like Britain, where qualified nurses can earn more money as carers, or even closer to home in the less well-off region.
“Some are migrating to South Africa, some are migrating to Zambia, some are actually migrating to Mozambique,” Tafirenyika said.
The corridors at Parirenyatwa are jammed with patients and their families navigating paint-chipped walls under cracked ceilings. The waiting lists are long.
Those who can afford it, travel to neighbouring South Africa for treatment. Others go to herbalists.
Faith based on “fear’
There is some misguided faith in the benefits of herbs and the risks of hospital treatment, said Lovemore Makurirofa, from the Cancer Association of Zimbabwe.
“Many people fear both the disease and its treatments, avoiding chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery,” he said.
The emerging herbal clinics, which advertise for business on street corners via loudspeakers, frustrate the hospitals.
“When you ask patients why it has taken them that long to come and seek medical attention, usually they tell you they’ve been using herbal medicines for quite a long time,” Mutizira said.
“When they eventually come, they have either stage three or stage four cancer, which is more difficult to treat, more expensive to treat, and also, the outcomes are much poorer.”
The herbalist who runs the Harare centre where Kativhu sought help for her breast cancer is confident of his abilities.
“I can treat any type of cancer," said Never Chirimo (66). Herbs also enable him to diagnose cancer, he claimed.
But he would like to work more closely with the hospitals.
“What I want is an open dialogue with doctors. Ultimately, we should work together, as many cancer patients prefer herbal remedies over conventional medicine.”
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