A nation’s soul is measured by how it treats its elderly.
When a society reaches a point where those who spent their youth building the nation are left to rot in their twilight years, we must ask ourselves what kind of people we have become.
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The plight of Zimbabwe’s pensioners is a tragic story that has been told over and over, yet every single day new depths of cruelty are uncovered. We all know the disgraceful peanuts dished out as monthly payouts by NSSA and private pension funds.
We know these meager sums cannot buy a decent basket of groceries, let alone pay for basic utilities. But nothing prepares you for the sheer heartlessness playing out inside our public health institutions. The very people entrusted with preserving life have turned our hospitals into predatory hunting grounds.
A deeply disturbing account brought to my attention by a reader—a former nurse who served for years in both public and private medical spaces—paints a horrifying picture of corruption and systemic neglect. Senior citizens, burdened by chronic age-related conditions and lacking any form of medical insurance, flock to public hospitals as their final sanctuary.
A number of these state institutions possess functional laboratories built specifically to offer affordable services to the public. Yet, what do these desperate elders encounter when they step into the consultation rooms? They are met by doctors who intentionally bypass state facilities to refer vulnerable patients to expensive private laboratories. In return, these practitioners pocket kickbacks while forcing destitute families to bleed financially.
Picture an elderly man or woman, weak from disease and surviving on a monthly pension that barely covers a loaf of bread a day, being handed a requisition form for private lab tests costing US$250. Where on earth is a Zimbabwean pensioner supposed to find such an amount? In many cases, impoverished families are forced to desperately pool resources or take out high-interest bank loans just to pay for blood work that should have been conducted down the hallway for a fraction of the cost.
This is not medical care; it is an organized racket. It is a predatory cartel operating right under the noses of hospital management. They exploit the panic and vulnerability of dying citizens to enrich unethical medical practitioners and private lab owners. What makes this reality even more sickening is the brazen impunity surrounding it. When this concerned former nurse allegedly confronted the chief executive officer of one of our major state hospitals about this rampant extortion, the administrator is said to have simply shrugged and claimed his hands were tied.
How can the executive director of a public institution claim helplessness while doctors under his direct supervision actively sabotage public services to feed private enterprise? If a hospital CEO cannot stop his staff from redirecting state patients to private entities for personal gain, then he has no business sitting in that office. This passive acceptance of corruption by hospital administrators is complicity, plain and simple.
We cannot continue to fold our hands while our mothers, fathers, and grandparents are subjected to such state-sanctioned cruelty. Those who dedicated three or four decades of their lives to the service of this country deserve dignity in their sunset years. They should not be squeezed like wet sponges by mercenary doctors who took the Hippocratic Oath only to abandon it for silver. Public health facilities exist to serve the public, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
The Ministry of Health and Child Care, alongside the Medical and Dental Practitioners Council of Zimbabwe, must immediately launch an unannounced, sweeping investigation into these referral rings. They must strike off the register any doctor found taking kickbacks from private laboratories. The moral gauge of any civilization is measured by how it treats its elderly and infirm. Right now, Zimbabwe is failing that test miserably.
Our pensioners are being forced to choose between taking out ruinous loans or quietly dying at home because a medical doctor decided that sending patients to private labs in return for a commission was worth more than a human life. We must expose this rot. We must dismantle these unholy alliances between public hospital staff and private diagnostic centers. And we must demand accountability from institutional leaders who claim their hands are tied while our elders perish.
Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com
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