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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke
Health Reporter
Zimbabwe’s health-care sector needs a collaborative effort to ensure that all pregnant women have full and practical access to health services, and full information on their medical rights, to continue pushing down maternal deaths and infant mortality rates.
According to experts, engagement could lead to an increased awareness among Zimbabwean women of their rights to access health services and help to ensure that the country continues to achieve its goals towards universal access to health.
Last month, a Harare woman won a case at the High Court in which she sued the Ministry of Health and Child Care after she lost her unborn child at Sally Mugabe Hospital in 2020.
Mrs Valerie Chibaya was awarded ZWL$800 000 for pain and suffering caused by the loss of her child, which the court determined was a result of negligence by the hospital in failing to provide adequate health care.
While Mrs Chibaya’s case was successful in court, there are many such cases that have not been addressed through the legal system but where pregnant women have lost their children or died during childbirth as a result of lack of attention from health care providers at council clinics and public and private hospitals.
Harare City Council clinics last year closed at least nine clinics that serve as birth centres citing shortage of nurses at the facilities affecting the delivery of maternal services to women in the city.
Women and Law in Southern Africa national director Mrs Fadzai Traquino, said engagement between stakeholders could be the only way to resolve the challenges being faced by many women in health facilities. She thought legal action should be the last resort and ensuring women knew enough to get good care was the best option.
“We are working with other civil society partners to educate women because at times women go to the hospital with no knowledge of the process of labour.
“Sometimes it is just information that women do not have. If you know your rights in terms of access to health, it can help in terms of prevention, preparedness and readiness.
“Our health sector is suffering a number of challenges but that doesn’t move the duty and responsibility of care as stakeholders and that is what we were trying to do,” she said.
She said health care was a basic human right that women require hence it was important for service providers to put human dignity first.
“Litigation is not always the best route because it can be interpreted in the wrong way so we would rather encourage that as communities, let us have conversations and share experiences and then agree on how things should be done in terms of the standard that we have set as a nation and the international obligations that we are signatory to.
“Litigation is also expensive so sometimes most cases go unresolved because people cannot afford the process and this is why we try to encourage conversations around this,” said Mrs Traquino.
Zimbabwe Confederation of Midwives president Mr Obert Nyatsuro said midwives are defenders of women’s rights hence should always strive to equip women with the requisite information for them to make informed decisions during pregnancy, labour and child birth.
“Because of the various challenges, we have seen a change in the attitude of some midwives in the delivery of their duties but a midwife should always be up to the task to see to it that things are done properly. As professionals, we are expected to execute our duties diligently.
“Women have the right to information and it is us who should equip those women with information and we should then respect whatever decision they make whether positive or negative.
“It is our motto as midwives that no woman should die while trying to give birth and no child should die while trying to live,” he said.
In terms of Section 76 of the Constitution, all Zimbabweans are guaranteed the right to healthcare.
The section states: “Every citizen and permanent resident of Zimbabwe has the right to have access to basic healthcare services which include reproductive health care services. It also states that no person should be refused emergency medical treatment in any healthcare institution and that the state must take reasonable legislative and other measures within the limits of the resources available to it to achieve progressive realisation of the right set out in this section.”
The country is a signatory and has ratified and domesticated the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, which means that Government has a duty to ensure that there is no discrimination against women in all areas of access to health.
Zimbabwe is also a signatory and member to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals which provides an important platform to the working of global sustainable human developments at all levels.
SDG 3.1 states that by 2030, there has to be a reduction of global maternal mortality ratio, it also states that by 2030 States have to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services including for family planning, information and education and the integration of reproductive health into national strategies and programmes.
Online Reporter