Health in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is a country that has been fighting against many diseases, some of which are incurable due to their poor health care system.

Zimbabwe had an average life expectancy of 55.68 years according to the 2014 CIA estimate.

A cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe that began in August 2008, swept across the country and spread to Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. By 10 January 2010 there had been 98,741 reported cases and 4,293 deaths making it the deadliest African cholera outbreak since 1993. The Zimbabwean government declared the outbreak a national emergency and requested international aid.

Zimbabwe was and still is one of the countries that were strongly afflicted by HIV/AIDS. Many of the males were affected, hence leaving many widowed females. This happened to bring on a sense of independence and the role of the breadwinner for the females – changing the roles of the sex. The immensity of this health issue can be clearly determined through this particular statistics: every one in five children are orphaned due the HIV/AIDS crisis – making an overall number of approximately 1 million orphans due to AIDS in 2011.

In 2011, the number of people living with HIV/AIDS reached approximately 1.2 million, when Zimbabwe had a population of approximately 12.75 million at that time. People infected with HIV/AIDS made up 9.41% of the population.

Zimbabwe is ranked among the 22 countries, where tuberculosis occurs frequently. In 2000, the incidence rate of tuberculosis reached 726 incidents per 100,000 people, where as in 2011, the number decreased to 603 incidents per 100,000 people. In 2011, the number of incidences of tuberculosis in Zimbabwe was 80 thousand, and the amount of deaths from this disease was 3.4 thousand. Africa is the top continent where tuberculosis occurs frequently, as it reached an estimated value of 2.3 million for incidences in 2010 by the World Health Organization.

According to the UNDP, Zimbabwe has eight Millennium Development Goals, the fourth is Child Health. Zimbabwe’s infant mortality rates have been decreasing. In 2000, the infant mortality rate was 63 deaths per 1000 people, whereas in 2010, the infant mortality rate was 45 deaths per 1000 people. This is an optimistic result from the goals that the Zimbabwean government – the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare – has set up, in order to decrease the infant/child mortality rates. Some of the most common diseases that these young children are facing are hunger: iron deficiency anaemia, vitamin A deficiency, and mentally impaired (iodine deficiency), and childhood diseases: acute respiratory infections, diarrhoeal disease, and malaria. Among these, the most common disease is 35,000 children suffering with mentally impaired disabilities due to iodine deficiency.

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