The Health and Child Care ministry’s strong rebuke of Youth minister Tinoda Machakaire, who grabbed headlines for publicly raising concern about what he called “serious challenges” at Zimbabwe’s hospitals was uncalled for as it will not lead to any solutions.
Machakaire had taken to X after visiting a relative at a public hospital where he said he had been left him “deeply concerned by the conditions I witnessed.”
He pleaded with President Emmerson Mnangagwa to visit public hospitals to get an appreciation of what was obtaining on the ground.
The Health ministry was quick to snap back and claimed that the minister’s comments were “part of a broader pattern of unwarranted and mischievous attacks.”
It claimed that the “comments seem to be well-orchestrated efforts aimed at selectively highlighting challenges within the public health care system, while deliberately overlooking the critical services still being provided often under resource-constrained conditions — and the significant progress made in recent years.”
Health and Child Care deputy minister Sleiman Kwidini, a former nurse, went a step further, telling Parliament that “as a ministry we are doing wonders”.
Two days later, the same ministry issued a statement bemoaning the withdrawal of funding by the United States for malaria control programmes, which it partly blamed for an alarming outbreak of the disease in the country.
The ministry said malaria cases had increased by 180 % since the beginning of the year from 21 309 in 2024 to 59 647 this year while bemoaning the withdrawal of United States funding for prevention programmes.
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Malaria deaths have increased by 218 %t from 45 in 2024 to 143 in 2025, the ministry said.
Zimbabwe’s health delivery system is heavily reliant on donor funding and the US government was the largest contributor through USAidwhose operations have been heavily curtailed by President Donald Trump’s new administration.
The US early this year said its initiatives through USAid and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had helped reduce the incidence of malaria in Zimbabwe by 40% in the last 15 years.
Failure to bring the malaria outbreak under control is just one of the many indicators of a failing health system.
Machakaire statement put into context what many Zimbabweans, who can’t afford private health care have to endure everyday.
What is clear is that the head-in-the-sand approach used by Health minister Douglas Mombeshora and his team isn’t a lasting solution.
