Online Reporter
OVER the past few years, Zimbabwe has been hit by a range of infectious illnesses, from Covid-19 to the more common illnesses such as cholera and typhoid and seasonal influenza outbreaks.
In each case, the Ministry of Health and Child Care was able to react with the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion going through the National Budget to move money from less critical allocations, quite often postponing capital spending, to ensure the emergency health measures were properly funded without creating deficits.
That these ad hoc measures for financing worked is tribute to the Treasury, but is not really ideal.
Medically, most of these emergency responses need almost instant response.
As will so much in any disaster of emergency, the earliest possible response minimises the spread of disease since the initial cases are being treated before infection spreads. And we owe it to the people to be able to move fast in any case so that numbers falling ill, or even dying, are very low.
Quite a lot is done in the normal course of events by the Health Ministry using its normal budget since, after all, the main function of the public health system is not just to provide the normal medical services like maternity, or the anti-malaria programme or similar work, but also to diagnose and treat sudden illness.
Prevention programmes also form a major part of this normal work.
But not everything can be planned. For example, in many years we have somewhere in Zimbabwe an outbreak of cholera, quite often triggered by infectious food being brought by a traveller from a neighbouring country.
Where the cholera strikes is not something that can be predicted; it could be anywhere although we learnt to make sure that we keep a sharp lookout and move promptly. The slower our response the more likely it will spread, and some of these infections can spread very fast even in the best levels of alert.
To speed up the response the Cabinet has now agreed to set up a US$4,5 million emergency fund, sitting there in the bank and ready for immediate use by the Treasury as soon as the medical emergency becomes apparent.
This allows the critical medical supplies and sundries to be bought promptly, and we have discovered that they are often available very quickly, but need the cash before release. While the Treasury cannot ignore its own rules about making sure procurement gives value for money and profiteering is eliminated, much of that necessary checking out of suppliers and prices can be done in advance.
We need to stockpile the emergency supplies as cash, since all medicines have a shelf life and we do not need to see stocks that are not used rotting away and having to be destroyed.
Having the cash very handy means the right medicines or other supplies for any particular emergency can be bought fresh and almost instantly, ensuring that we do not waste our limited resources on stockpiling the wrong things.
Considering the costs of some of our public health emergencies, and Covid-19 was perhaps the most expensive, more than the set-aside US$4,5 million will be needed in these cases.
But at least the emergency funds can be used to get the response on the road, giving time for the Treasury to look at the national budget to see where top-up money can come from.
We also need to remember that some of the help we might have received in the past from development partners is less likely, or at least will be reduced. So we cannot live in the expectation that someone else will bail us out.
We need, as Africans and as we are having to plan to do in many other areas, be ready to take responsibility ourselves. One advantage is that we will make very certain that we are both ready, and that we get maximum value for our hard-earned tax dollars set aside in a special account.
Funding medical services is never going to be cheap, and even when we work to get the value we can always use more money. And ever more of this now has to come from our own resources, and not just because aid budgets have been cut.
As we move up the ladder to an upper-middle income economy, we were going to have to take up more of the financial burden in any case.
Already the Finance Ministry is working out ways for sustainable increases in local resources to be applied to health prevention and treatment, largely through innovative taxes that move some of the vast sums we spend on less healthy food and lifestyles towards those responsible for public health.
While every tax, especially a new one, excites criticism, most people — so long as the tax levels are moderate and fair — see the point and complain less when new money goes on health.
Even if we do not use the public health system much, we still live and work with people who do, and need to live and work with healthy people.
In any case, something like cholera hits every body in a community, so we really need to back measures that ensure the community will be able to cope promptly and effectively, and so we fully agree with the Cabinet that we needed this emergency fund.
