I got hit by the realities of Zimbabwe a little over a week ago now. A few days after coming to Zimbabwe I managed to catch a bacterial infection. This infection was in my sinuses, it’s believed I caught this at one of the local swimming pools, possibly Highlands public pool.
Having travelled to countries like Mali, Guinea as well as Sierra Leonne one would have had Zimbabwe last on my list of countries to catch an infection.
I was taken to one of the local hospitals, Borrowdale Trauma Centre, this is a private clinic. When I got there my temp had hit 39.6 degrees and you know that’s insanely high. They took some blood tests and obviously due to my travel they were all expecting this to be some other infection from another country. All my tests came back negative and only my white blood cell count was low which indicated that I had an infection. They stabilised me and send me home, already that evening I had a bill of around $370. The next evening I returned again and they did more tests and this time I was admitted at Dandaro Clinic where they conducted even more tests and by this time I had paid over $1,800. I did have medical insurance and I knew I could get this money back at some point. I stayed at Dandaro for 3 days and then was moved to Avenues clinic by my insurance with a possible fly out to South Africa if avenues couldn’t pin point the cause of my headaches and temperature. When I was admitted to Avenues my insurance had to flock just under $2000 on the first day, that was for a CT scan, consultation and well as my 3 day stay, I ended up staying 5 days so the final bill will be even more when I checkout., at the same time I had to pay my doctor in cash because he is not part of the hospital or something crazy like that, this time it was a physician. My cash payout from my own pocket had already reached a little over $3000 coupled with what my insurance paid its all way over $5,000. The CT scan managed to catch the cause of my headaches and high fever.
I’m leaving the hospital today as I’ve made a good recovery. But what I have mentioned above has taught me that In Zimbabwe, money decides who lives and who dies. It’s the sad truth I had to learn, not a lot of people in Zimbabwe can afford to pay that kind of money.
I’ll take you back a few steps. While I was at Dandaro, I would spend a few of my hours on a balcony and I could see the patient next to my room lying on the floor via a huge glass door, he would hardly move, after a second day I managed to get to speak to his younger brother and asked if I could help in anyway. He’s brother started to cry and said they really didn’t have much money to have him stay any longer, he said he had caught meningitis of some sort, they wanted to move him to a cheaper hospital. Me and my partner decided to offer them $600 dollars to help pay the bills and possibly a better meds. We offered them $300 dollars to start with and would have given them the other $300 as he progressed. The next day his wife came and thanked us and we could see he was moving slightly and had opened his eyes. A few hours after they left, he sadly passed away.
I was so heart broken, I was heartbroken because this young man had died mainly because he probably couldn’t afford to pay to have the sort of scans he needed, the proper medication he would also have needed.
It saddens me that in Zimbabwe money decides who lives and who doesn’t.
Ngatigadzirei nyika, kugadzira nyika ibasa redu tose.
*Published with the express permission of the writer*
Photo credit: www.telegraph.co.uk
