Unicef Rep To Zimbabwe Bids Farewell To VP Chiwenga

Outgoing Unicef representative to Zimbabwe, Ms. Laylee Moshiri bade farewell to Vice President Constantino Chiwenga and expressed the organisation’s commitment to work with Government especially in ensuring child health.

Speaking after the interview with VP Chiwenga, Ms. Moshiri said Unicef was committed to supporting the government of Zimbabwe and the Ministry of Health and Child Care in their efforts towards achieving healthy children. She said:

Our role is to support the system strengthening in various dimensions towards becoming resilient.

We are grateful to our donors who are supporting us with development fund, the United Kingdom, European Union, Sweden and Ireland which help us to have this pool funding to address all the various dimensions of the work of the health development fund towards maternal and health care fund.

VP Chiwenga who doubles as the minister of Health and Child Care expressed gratitude to Unicef for working with Zimbabwe in the health and education sectors since independence. He said:

Unicef has been with us since our independence assisting us in the area of the children primarily but they are also into education.

When it comes of the Ministry of Health we have done a lot and they have done a lot with us through their health development fund which they assisted the Ministry of Health with starting from the funding and assisting us in establishing our health village workers which is key to good health delivery when you have the health starting at village then we are quite confident of what the situation will be from that level.

Ms. Moshiri leaves Zimbabwe when analysts are saying the health sector has over the years been collapsing to the extent that gains registered since independence have been reversed.

What remains, they say, are structures that are “meaningless” when basics like “paracetamol pills” are in short supply in most public health institutions.

The government has always been accused of neglecting the local health sector as “political elites get medication from abroad.”

More: The Herald