MATABELELAND North and South provinces have the highest proportion of chronically ill citizens, who are HIV positive but incidentally the least when it comes to receiving any form of support such as food aid and cash transfers.
By NQOBANI NDLOVU
The latest Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment (ZimVac) 2020 Rural Assessment report shows that at least 22% of households had members living with a chronic condition, 38% of them HIV positive.
ZimVAC is a technical advisory committee composed of representatives from government, development partners, United Nations agencies, non-governmental organisations, technical agencies and academia.
It is chaired by the Food and Nutrition Council (FNC), a department in the Office of the President and Cabinet, whose mandate is to “promote a multi-sectoral response to food and nutrition problems” such as hunger and malnutrition.
According to the ZimVAC report, Matabeleland North has the highest percentage of chronically ill people who are HIV positive, the least being Manicaland. “Thirty-eight percent of the chronically ill members were living with HIV/Aids.
“The highest proportion was in Matabeleland North (53%),” the ZimVAC report revealed.
Matabeleland North is followed by Matabeleland South at 46%, Masvingo (37%), Mashonaland West (36%), Midlands and Mashonaland Central (35%), Mashonaland East (32%) and Manicaland at 31%.
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ZimVAC livelihood assessments are seen as an important tool for informing and guiding policies that respond to the prevailing food and nutrition situation in the country.
ZimVAC researchers used household food insecurity prevalence as the key indicator to determine the sample to ensure 95% confidence level of statistical representativeness at district, provincial and national level.
Incidentally, Matabeleland North and South rank lowly compared to Mashonaland West, Midlands and Masvingo in terms of recorded forms of support such as food aid to HIV positive members, according to the report.
In terms of food aid support to HIV positive persons, Midlands had the highest beneficiaries at 45.9%, Masvingo (32.4%), Manicaland (30.1%), Mashonaland East and Central (29.8%), Masvingo (22.9%) with Matabeleland South and North at 22.9% and 21.1%.
The same reads for cash transfer support as Mashonaland West had the highest number of beneficiaries at 4.0%, Mashonaland Central 1.7%, Midlands 1.41%, Matabeleland South 1.2%, Mashonaland East 0.80%, Matabeleland 0.60%, Masvingo 0.9% and Manicaland zero support to HIV persons.
Analyst Effie Ncube argued the statistics confirmed that Matabeleland region was marginalised economically and in terms of accessing services.
“The only solution for that is for the government to fulfil its constitutional obligation, that is to say, to ensure the fair and equal treatment of all regions in the country,” Ncube argued.
“Government must ensure a fair share of the economic cake is passed onto the Matabeleland region which is consistent with its contribution to the national fiscus when you look at the amount of money that is generated by gold, tourism…and compare it with what it is ploughing back to the region, really, it’s a huge disservice.”
The ZimVAC report also shows that the majority of patients suffering from chronic illnesses were not taking any medication as it was priced beyond reach. “At least 22% of the households had members living with a chronic condition.
“At least 19% of households with members with chronic illnesses had missed their medication. Most of the reasons of missing medication were monetary,” the report reads.
“Of those chronically ill people that missed their medication, the main reasons were medication being expensive (75.7%), not having the required currency to purchase (13.8%), lack of transport (11.3%) and no money to pay for transport (11%). Most of the reasons for missing medication were monetary.”
Itai Rusike, Community Working Group on Health executive director, said affordable quality health services and public health programmes are very important to promote health, prevent ill health and treat illness especially for chronic patients.
“Of concern is that the highest cost items are those for chronic care…It raises the question as to whether specific categories of drugs should receive focus from donor support and subsidised costs for consumers,” Rusike said.
“Therefore, the government and its development partners should also provide food parcels to the chronic patients so that they can continue taking their medication as some of the drugs cannot be taken on an empty stomach.
“There is need for a decentralised service provision for chronic conditions to the clinics in order to reduce the out-of-pocket transport costs as some patients may need to collect their monthly drug supplies.”
Government health delivery centres lack basic drugs and equipment, forcing patients to turn to private pharmacies that price their products beyond reach and in foreign currency, mostly the United States dollar.
The prices are also much higher compared to neighbouring countries.
