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Stephen Mpofu

HEALTH services — like food, water, education, protection, et cetera — are every Zimbabwean’s basic right and the immediate implication here is that these services should be good, efficient and not too costly for the majority to afford them.

In this regard, a report published earlier this week to the effect that the Health Professions Authority of Zimbabwe (HPAZ) will soon swoop on private health centres to put under scrutiny the institutions’ fees schedules and patient billing inspections to protect members of the public from inaccurate and exorbitant charges by health institutions must be applauded by everyone.

It is no exaggeration to think that some if not most institutions have literally taken patients to the cleaners, as it were, and got away with murder.

They have and continue to exploit the poor souls approaching them because of what they apparently consider to be the Government’s blind eye on them while the State concentrates on profiteering by shop owners and other traders.

As a result, it is possible that patients unable to foot the exorbitant bills or meet impossible conditions demanded by the institutions in question in urban or rural areas end up making bee-lines to quacks or traditional healers in the village, both of whom lack scientific knowledge to carry out proper diagnosis, thereby leaving the patients in greater danger.

The public at large will now no doubt heave a huge sigh of relief in the knowledge that HPAZ will now heavily weigh in to shove in the shade those health institutions that fail to spruce up — a similar, if not the same fate that must befall public institutions which fail to live up to their billing as spelt out by Health and Child Care Deputy Minister Dr John Mangwiro after a tour of the facilities in Victoria Falls last Sunday.

He expressed disappointment at what he said was a lack of care and lack of cleanliness at some of the health centres in the tourist city.

If those concerned do not rise to their toes to put things right but remain on their haunches instead, they deserve to be shown the door.

Lackadaisical attitudes are an impediment to all forms of advancement in this country as everywhere else in the global village.

Everyone concerned will now keep their fingers crossed to see whether the businesses now under scrutiny will positively respond at speed by putting right their reported failures or keep their heads buried in the sand to try to see who is who, they or the authorities intrigued by the goings-on in the businesses in point.