https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/2025/05/17/zimbabwes-bleeding-healthcare-system-doesnt-deserve-a-minister-who-is-always-missing-in-action/ *_PLEASE SHARE_* *Zimbabwe’s bleeding healthcare system doesn’t deserve a Minister who is always missing in action* _BY Tendai Ruben Mbofana_ *YOU'D expect an emergency to demand urgency and serious attention — but not in Zimbabwe’s healthcare system.* Zimbabwe’s healthcare system is gasping for air. It is crippled by dilapidated infrastructure, erratic or entirely non-existent water supply, and frequent electricity outages. Cancer and dialysis machines are broken down, essential drugs are in constant short supply, and nurses and doctors are fleeing en masse to countries like the United Kingdom due to poor remuneration. *_● If you believe in Tendai Ruben Mbofana’s fight for justice in Zimbabwe, please consider supporting his work financially. Every contribution helps him keep going, independently and fearlessly._* In such a crisis, one would expect the Minister of Health and Child Care to be among the most active and visible figures in government. After all, his is not a ceremonial portfolio. It is a life-and-death assignment. Yet since his appointment by President Emmerson Mnangagwa in September 2023, Minister Douglas Mombeshora has, in a year and a half, only managed to directly engage with frontline medical staff and personally assess public hospitals twice. That alone is a scandal. The reality is that Zimbabwe’s public healthcare sector is in a state of collapse. The majority of public hospitals are a tragic shadow of what they ought to be. Operating theatres are grossly under-equipped. There are hardly any working cancer machines. Dialysis units can barely cater to the overwhelming demand. Bedding is worn out. Wards are overcrowded. Ambulances are scarce. There are barely any essential drugs in most pharmacies. And frontline health professionals — our nurses, midwives, doctors, and support staff — are poorly paid, overworked, and routinely disrespected. They are leaving the country in droves, often retraining as care workers abroad, because they see no future in the broken system that Zimbabwe insists on calling healthcare. Despite this grim reality, the man at the helm of this troubled sector has not shown the urgency, commitment, or hands-on leadership one would expect. Minister Mombeshora’s two known visits — one to Ingutsheni Central Hospital in December 2024 and the other to Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals just yesterday, May 16, 2025 — are his only clear engagements where he has sat down with nurses and doctors to hear their concerns and tour the facilities. Two visits in 18 months. Two. That’s not a man at work. That’s a man watching from a safe distance while the house burns. Even when nurses protested in March 2025 at Sally Mugabe Central Hospital over deplorable working conditions and lack of resources, the Ministry issued a public statement — but the minister himself never showed up. He has still not shown up. Not even once to face the very professionals whose hands keep the fragile healthcare system from total collapse. What makes matters worse is that even after fellow Cabinet minister Tinoda Machakaire recently spoke out about the deplorable conditions within our public health institutions — whatever his true intentions — Mombeshora still did not rush to the ground to verify the crisis for himself. Instead, he opted to issue a defensive statement denying what everyone already knew. To add insult to injury, his deputy minister had the audacity to claim that patients were satisfied with the standards at our hospitals, and that it was only those on social media making noise. This level of detachment and arrogance from senior officials overseeing a broken healthcare system is not only shocking — it is inexcusable. It is both disrespectful and negligent. It is not enough for Minister Mombeshora to merely show up at nurses’ graduation ceremonies or attend official events at hospitals, where he pontificates about the government’s commitment to the welfare of frontline health professionals and urges them to be diligent and dedicated in their duties. These symbolic gestures ring hollow when he never takes the time to sit down with these same professionals to listen to their concerns, frustrations, and urgent grievances. True leadership requires more than speeches — it demands presence, empathy, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. And then, suddenly, yesterday, we see him at Parirenyatwa. Why now? Why not two months ago, when nurses at Sally Mugabe were raising alarm bells? Why not last year, when every independent health review was sounding the sirens about collapsing services across Zimbabwe? His timing raises uncomfortable questions. This visit comes mere days after President Mnangagwa returned from Belarus, where a curious agreement was signed between Zimbabwe and the former Soviet republic to renovate Parirenyatwa Hospital. The deal itself remains cloaked in secrecy. We don’t know who will do the work, how much it will cost the Zimbabwean taxpayer, or whether this is yet another example of inflated tenders handed out to politically connected cartels masquerading as development partners. The track record of Zimbabwe’s deals with Belarus leaves a bitter taste. One only needs to recall the involvement of murky figures such as Alexander Zingman and Sergei Sheiman — names that have cropped up before in controversial Zimbabwean contracts. These are not men known for philanthropy or transparency. Given that background, the timing of Mombeshora’s sudden appearance at Parirenyatwa is troubling. Was the visit genuinely driven by concern for nurses, doctors, and the hospital’s crumbling state? Or was it a calculated public relations manoeuvre designed to give credibility to a deal whose real beneficiaries may never be the patients? The evidence suggests that concern for healthcare workers has never been a priority for this minister. Not when he ignored protesting nurses. Not when he stayed silent as medical professionals continued leaving in droves. Not when hospitals went without medicine or water. His absence during the worst of times says more than his presence ever could. One must then ask: Does he even care? Or has this vital ministry simply become a portfolio to hold, not a duty to fulfil? The silence and inaction from President Mnangagwa are just as damning. Why has he allowed such inertia in a ministry so central to the lives of every Zimbabwean? If we are to take the President’s oft-repeated mantra of “leaving no one behind” seriously, then surely, the health sector should be at the top of his reform and supervision agenda. And if a minister cannot deliver in the face of such overwhelming need, shouldn’t he be replaced with someone who will? The people of Zimbabwe deserve better. They deserve a minister who wakes up daily with a plan for fixing the health sector. A minister who walks the corridors of our broken hospitals, speaks to the exhausted staff, sees the pain of patients who can’t afford medication, and acts — urgently and transparently. They deserve a public servant who leads from the front — not from a boardroom, not from a press statement, and certainly not only after a suspicious foreign deal has been signed. This is not just about Mombeshora. It’s about the lives being lost every single day because of a broken system that no one in government seems genuinely willing to fix. It’s about mothers who die in childbirth because there’s no electricity in maternity wards. It’s about children whose treatable illnesses become death sentences because there’s no medicine. It’s about healthcare workers who work double shifts on empty stomachs, only to be ignored by the very people who should be fighting for them. Zimbabwe’s healthcare system is burning. What it needs now are not absentee ministers or photo-op visits. It needs leadership. Real, visible, relentless leadership. Dr. Douglas Mombeshora has had more than enough time to show that he is up to the task. His dismal record proves otherwise. He has failed. And when a minister fails at something this critical, it is not only policies that suffer — it is lives that are lost. He has no business remaining at the helm of the Ministry of Health and Child Care. Zimbabwe cannot afford another 18 months of neglect. Not when the stakes are this high. Not when the pain is this real. *_● Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: [email protected], or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/_*