By Abigirl Tembo, Health Editor
Public health experts and medical practitioners have welcomed the allocation of a huge chunk of the national budget towards the health sector saying it will go a long way in achieving universal health coverage.
Community Working Group on Health Executive Director, Mr Itai Rusike said, “There has been some significant improvement especially the 71% of the total health budget has been allocated towards addressing the issues of conditions of service. You know the compensation for the health workers. I think this is encouraging. We are also encouraged by the suggestion by the Finance Minister to increase the tax, especially on the sugary drinks and the funding going towards addressing the issue of non-communicable diseases.”
A medical practitioner, Dr Hamadziripi Dube said, “There is a commitment that I am seeing from the new dispensation towards the health sector and we applaud the President and his cabinet. There is more commitment and dedication and this will in turn improve the operations of the ministry and improve the health sector and we applaud them.”
“This is an improvement from what we got last year although we fall short of the Abuja Declaration, which stipulates that at least 15% of the national fiscus should be allocated to the health sector. I hope with this increase we are going to see staff retention because we noted a lot of brain drain. We hope much of this money will be used for that. The government has been trying. His Excellency was all over Zimbabwe opening clinics health centres and so forth. We are working under harsh economic conditions, but we can say our health delivery system has improved quite a lot and we hope this money will further improve it,” said another medical practitioner, Dr Johannes Marisa.
The Ministry of Health and Child Care got the second largest amount of ZW$473.8 billion, while the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education received the largest chunk of ZW$631.3 billion.
