health care collapse due to human rights abuse

from Catholic news service (US)


WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Zimbabwe's health care system, once a model for southern Africa, has collapsed because of the government's egregious, systematic human rights violations, said a human rights report.

The report by the nonprofit, independent group Physicians for Human Rights said Zimbabwe's doctors do not have viable salaries and most public hospitals have closed. At the same time, Zimbabweans are suffering from a cholera epidemic, increasing maternal mortality, and cases of malnutrition, AIDS, tuberculosis and anthrax, said the report, released in mid-January by the Massachusetts-based organization....


An expert working with Zimbabwe's federal tuberculosis program told a Physicians for Human Rights investigator: "There is no politically correct way to say this -- the TB program in Zimbabwe is a joke. The national TB lab has one staff person. ... This is a brain-drain problem."

a bit overblown, I think....yes, Mugabe's Marxist approach to the economy has caused it to collapse, but that isn't a "human rights" issue, but an economic one...as for the brain drain: what good are doctors if there is no medicine, and the doctor can't support his family....if all these "human rights" organizations would kick in salary guarantees, the docs would stay...