Chronicle Editor
Thandeka Moyo-Ndlovu, Senior health reporter
ALTHOUGH Zimbabwe has improved on maternal mortality rate for the past 10 years, the neo-natal mortality rate has remained practically unchanged since 1988, at 31 deaths per 1 000 live births.
Neo-natal death is when a baby dies in the first 28 days of life and many of these occur during the first week after birth.
According to a 2021 Unicef Report released recently, health service coverage particularly in remote and urban poor areas, remains low due to weak and underfunded health systems, insufficient human resources and weak governance.
The report also shows that one of the country’s achievements is the halving of maternal deaths from 916 to 462 from 2020.
Unicef says under-five mortality also declined significantly in just five years, from 75 to 65 deaths per 1 000 live births between 2014 and 2019.
“The neo-natal mortality rate has remained practically unchanged since 1988, at 31 deaths per 1 000 live birth, due to malnutrition, Aids, pneumonia, malaria and diarrhoea. Nutritional deficiency is a leading cause of the health burden.
Poor dietary intake is influenced by inadequate knowledge, cultural-and-gender norms, insufficient quality nutrition services, and food legislation not complying with international standards. That said, stunting rates have decreased in the last 15years, from 31 percent in 2007 as high as 39 percent in some rural areas) but is now down to a national rate of 23.5 percent,” said Unicef.
In 2021, Unicef supported the finalisation of the National Health Strategy (NHS) (2021- 2025) in partnership with the Government to improve governance and oversight.
The NHS is now informing the development of the National Food and Nutrition Security and Immunisation Strategies.
“The end-line evaluation of the Health Development Fund (HDF) (2016-2021), a multi-donor fund, was concluded, and the findings informed the development of the next phase of the fund.
“The HDF partnership with Unicef boosted skilled-birth attendance rates to 91.5 percent, against a target of 90 percent, providing maternity units with lifesaving equipment in 73 hospitals and 40 health centres. Additionally, Unicef’s support in capacity building of health workers, infrastructure rehabilitation and deployment of tools and guidelines.”
Besides these achievements, maternal antiretroviral treatment (ART) coverage has surpassed 90 percent in Zimbabwe while 91, 5 percent skilled-birth attendance was recorded in 2021.
“About 83 percent of all villages which translates to about 2,5 million households now have at least one trained village health worker – up by two percent since 2020.
Around 75 percent of targeted children received ORS and zinc for the treatment of diarrhoea in 2021. – @thamamoe
Online Reporter