The government of Zimbabwe has been warned against neglecting other diseases in the name of fighting COVID-19.
The warning comes when the government has since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic been channeling most of the resources allocated to the Ministry of Health and Child Care towards fighting the virus at the expense of other diseases.
Passmore Nyakureba, a legal practitioner with the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights also urged the government to judiciously use the country’s resources to revive the country’s collapsed health sector. He said:
While the government is doing a good job to deal with Covid-19, we are now neglecting some people with other diseases.
There are diseases killing more people in Zimbabwe such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/Aids, malnutrition, influenza, pneumonia and cancer than Covid-19, and the concentration of resources on one pandemic spells disaster for the country’s fragile economy.
His remarks come when the country has recorded about 170 000 malaria cases and over 150 deaths in 2020 alone while the number of coronavirus cases recorded in the country are at 58 including 4 deaths.
More: Daily News