Can high-profile coronavirus deaths change health systems?

Prior to COVID-19, the country’s public health facilities were experiencing challenges such as almost 0% vacancy rates, as well as inadequate ambulances, ventilators, and PPE, he said. But the pandemic exacerbated the lack of resources.

Now that everyone has been forced to rely upon local public health facilities due to airport closures, Jobe is hoping there will be a realization that “the country’s health services need to be better resourced so that referrals to other countries should greatly be minimized.”

Figures from UNICEF show that both Malawi and Zimbabwe have consistently failed to meet the target set out under the 2001 Abuja Declaration, which saw African Union countries pledging to allocate at least 15% of their annual budgets to the health sector.

Over the last few years, Zimbabwe has gradually increased its budget allocation to health from 7% in 2019 to 10% in 2020 and 12.74% in 2021 — but still failed to meet this target.

In Malawi, though health remains the third-largest sector in terms of budget allocations — with 9.4% of the total budget in the 2019-2020 financial year — it has also consistently failed to meet the target.

However, the Malawian government appears to have taken heed of the need for more investment. In January, after the deaths of two cabinet ministers, Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera declared a state of emergency over COVID-19 and pledged to increase funding and recruit additional medical personnel.

“Our medical facilities are terribly understaffed, and our medical personnel are outnumbered,” he said.

Marion Pechayre, head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières in Malawi, said she has also noticed a rapid increase in resources at the two biggest hospitals in Blantyre.

“The Ministry of Health has stepped up quite well in the past two weeks, because they have recruited more than 1,300 staff and they had some 150 oxygen concentrators which they distributed throughout the country,” she said.

Though Dube said she hopes officials in Zimbabwe will do the same, she is doubtful that this will be the case.

“I am still convinced that even after this, if [the government] are to do something, they will develop a state of the art for themselves,” she said, “not for me and you.”- Devex

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