Zimbabwean Healthcare Needs Money...
Money is the blood that keeps the system alive...
I recently took a trip to understand healthcare in Zimbabwe. As someone from Zim I wanted to get an understanding of how we could improve services there.
It’s fairly normal to hear that someone collapsed and died in Zimbabwe in their 40s, whereas in the UK if this happened this would be something that is completely unheard of.
The current state of affairs in Zimbabwe means that good healthcare is inaccessible for the majority of the population. Most people are a big distance away from a facility that can help them!
If we want to improve care in Zim, there are many ideas that all could work, such as having more doctors/nurses, building more clinics, improving public health, community initiatives, etc. However, I think all of these ideas boil down to one core idea.
If you want to improve healthcare in Zimbabwe there needs to be money in the system before people become ill
This allows for the ‘business’ of the health facility to remain open and operational. It allows for services to expand, staff to be paid, and it allows for the stock and drugs to be ready for the time you become unwell. This is a challenge that most healthcare systems around the world face, for example, in the UK, with the rising cost of care, one of the biggest challenges is where the government can get even more money to provide free healthcare to the public. This is being done via measures such as increasing taxes.
However Zimbabwe is a cash-based economy, and a lot of people are in informal employment. For the government to successfully collect enough tax revenue to fund healthcare will be a massive challenge. To some, it may seem as if there are more important challenges to solve first, such as employment or infrastructure, etc.
Some of the ways you can fund the system before people get ill
Insurance - Having a health insurance that actually does cover people, whether its at an individual clinic or at a nationwide service. This allows us to know that people are paying into a system before they get unwell, so that the day they are unwell the ‘lifeline’ of the healthcare business has allowed it to be open. Given a cash-based economy and the employment situation, this will need an element of creativity for it to work successfully. I’m thinking off the top of my head here but imagine a partnership with Net-One and Econet so that every time people top up a dollar on their phone (credit), a percentage of that goes towards the cost of care. This allows people to still have a service, but without thinking of it too much!
Diaspora remittance - Unfortunately, the by-product of life in Zimbabwe meant that loads of people left looking for better jobs. Those in the UK, Canada, and Australia send a lot of money back home each year. Building an app that can compete with a World Remit or Remitly under the premise of instead of the app taking a fee for its operations, the fee we take to fund healthcare in Zimbabwe. This is a method that people can send money back to Zim and also know that their loved ones can receive healthcare as a result.
I have a video where I explore how we can improve these things in Zimbabwe and i would love for you to let me know your thoughts.
As always, these are just ideas, I believe that the people who are on the ground living with this reality every day probably have better solutions than my self.
Until Next Time Friends…