Zimbabwe

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crisp]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on his powerful introduction to this debate, which sparked many other powerful speeches, including the remarkable maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Dannatt. I want to speak briefly about health in Zimbabwe. Our main discussion today is naturally about the political situation, rights and the rule of law, but I know that noble Lords will well understand the relationship of health in the short term and, perhaps more importantly, in the long term to the condition of the country. The reduction in health status that we have seen in recent years is as significant a deficit in the country as any other problem.

A healthy population is strongly connected to the economy, to well-being, to civil society and eventually to the rehabilitation and rebuilding of a healthy society. There have been some improvements over the past two years, but they follow a desperate decade of deterioration. Everywhere we can see chronic shortages in the supply of drugs and of staff, many people having fled the country, some of them coming here but a significant number going to their neighbours, poor morale and—that indicator of difficulties in the future—a reduction of and other problems in the education and training of health workers.

The result, as my noble friend Lord Sandwich said, is predictably awful. Over the past 18 years, maternal mortality has more than doubled, from 380 deaths per 100,000 births in 1990 to 810 per 100,000 in 2008. Translated into terms that are easier to understand, it means that one mother dies in every 120 births. The equivalent would be a mother dying every week in St Thomas’s Hospital across the river. These are awful figures. Over the past 15 years, life expectancy has dropped from the mid-60s to 44 years. The health status of the country has deteriorated very quickly.

As I said, there has been some improvement over the past two years, which can be linked to economic improvements in the country, but there is more to do. What I want to draw attention to in my remarks is the work and role of diaspora organisations and the many links that we have between the UK and Zimbabwe. From time to time, I am approached by groups of Zimbabweans who ask how civil society, as much as government, can help to support the rehabilitation and improvement of health in the country both now and, crucially, in the longer term.

Let me talk about one such group, Zimbabwe Health Training Support. Founded in 2006, the group comprises health professionals who are almost all from Zimbabwe, the others having strong links with the country although they come from the UK. Its role is to leverage the talent of the diaspora and to create sustainable links between this country and people in Zimbabwean organisations in order to support improvements in health.

Currently the group is supporting 10 Zimbabwean institutions across all parts of the country, regardless of politics, and working with organisations such as the Zimbabwe Association of Church-related Hospitals. Zimbabwe Health Training Support responds to need. Over the past four years it has trained 100 midwives with partners in the UK, including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and by drawing strongly on British talent has trained 16 people in emergency obstetrics The organisation is grateful for the support that it gets from the UK, recognising that some element of DfID money allocated to the country is going towards maternal and child health, as well as towards water and sanitation improvements. The group recognises that at the moment it can receive only a small grant from DfID to support its work but urges the department to pay more attention to helping it to support the training and education of future health workers in Zimbabwe, because that is what will be vital in the years to come.

I conclude my brief remarks with two questions. First, thinking forward and at the right time, do the Government plan to provide specific support for rebuilding and revitalising the health sector in Zimbabwe? Secondly, in the short term, what support will they give to diaspora organisations, such as the one that I have talked about, which are working in the healthcare sector?