Zimbabwe should be the hellish poster child of socialism and what it does with free health care. However, western media ignores socialist disasters and the misery it causes for people living in such systems. Currently, all public doctors at state-run Zimbabwe hospitals have walked off their jobs in protest of poor pay, lack of medical supplies and drugs. Zimbabwean press is now reporting that patients in public hospitals are starving for lack of food. In response, the Zimbabwean government has fired up to 500 junior doctors who participated in the walk-out. Senior doctors did not initially participate in the strike as their pay scale was higher but now they too have left their jobs in protest of pay and hospital conditions. As an emergency measure, the government is staffing emergency rooms with Army doctors whose primary specialty is in treating military type injuries and traumas but lack skills to deal with specialized medical conditions and emergencies.
Many are now referring to their free health care system is crises as the “Silent Genocide” on the heals of another recent outbreak of cholera.
In an interview on BBC, a spokesperson for the Zimbabwean doctors union, indicated that though all doctors take the oath to help the sick and injured as part of their profession, the current conditions they are operating in are completely counterproductive to helping anyone and may cause more harm than good by continuing to attempt to treat patients. According to the spokesperson “…what is the difference if we treat someone and they will of course die anyways because there are no antibiotics available in the hospital pharmacy and they can’t afford to buy it from the private pharmacies…”. While private hospitals and pharmacies do exist in Zimbabwe, few have access and even fewer have the ability to pay for such private services due to the state of the economy under the socialist government.
In the past decades, every grand Zimbabwean socialist initiative has resulted in economic decline and growing misery. At the end of white minority rule in the late 1980’s, Robert Mugabe a Marxist-socialist guerilla leader credited with defeating the colonial powers became President. He instituted socialistic policies promising to provide free healthcare and education for all. To pay for these policies, he target the rich and white landowners. He even went as far as to legalize the confiscation of private farms and properties owned by whites as “reparation” for colonial rule. The whites in Zimbabwe began to flee the country en masse abandoning their farms and businesses as the government began confiscating their lands and homes. The economy crashed as businesses shut down and tax payments evaporated. Food prices skyrocketed as the confiscated farms didn’t have the skill to produce crops. The result of these policies was hyper-inflation with the government printing money it didn’t have to pay for services it couldn’t afford. President Mugabe was arrested by his own government after many decades in power and resigned under pressure. The white farmers were invited back into the country and take back their farms but only a few have accepted that offer.
There is not much hope for Zimbabweans in the near run. With their socialist economy is in shambles and a failed health care and educational infrastructure, its citizens both black and white are fleeing for other prosperous countries. There are not many solutions available to the government. Some in the country are looking to the UN and the WHO for help but those organizations at best may only put a plug a small hole on a collapsing dam.
Every time free health care and free education is promised by a political candidate anywhere, people should look at what happened to every country that has gone that route and the death and misery it has caused.
