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Paidamoyo Chipunza Health Reporter
The Ministry of Health and Child Care accessed more than half of its allocated budget in 2013, a local non-governmental organisation has said. In its analysis of the 2013 National Budget, the Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) said as at November 2013, the MoHCC accessed 61,9 percent of its allocated resources.
CWGH is a network of civic and community-based organisations that seek to collectively enhance public participation in health matters.
The organisation’s executive director, Mr Itai Rusike, said the lion’s share of the 61,9 percent finances accessed went to salaries.

“Since 2009 the bulk of the MoHCC expenditure has neither gone to operations or capital expenditure, but has gone to meeting the wage demands of its human resource,” he said.

“The share of expenditure for the non-wage component has been decreasing since 2010.”
Mr Rusike said according to international best practices, which the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-Asset) also seeks to address, the ratio of wage and non-wage expenditure should be 30:70.

He further noted that the preventive and research sub-votes received more funds in 2013 compared to other sub-sectors.
Preventive services accessed 74,7 percent of its initial allocation while research accessed 87,4 percent. The other sub-votes like administration and medical care services accessed 62,8 percent and 60,1 percent, respectively.

Mr Rusike said although allocations for Government hospitals and health centres were reduced from US$23,7 million to US$20,7 million in the 2014 National Budget proposals, seven provincial hospitals accessed 70 percent of their allocations from the 2013 Budget.

He applauded the 2014 National Budget proposals for providing funding for recapitalisation of Natpharm, which was allocated US$2,5 million; a cancer advocacy fund of US$500 000; and committing US$5 million for results-based financing among other positives.
He, however, noted that Health still got less than 15 percent of the total budget.

Zimbabwe is signatory to the Abuja Declaration in which African countries agreed to commit 15 percent of their national budget to health.
In the 2014 National Budget, Health was allocated US$337 million, accounting for 8,2 percent of the total vote. This is less than the 9,87 percent allocated in 2013.

Inclusive of constitutional and statutory proportions, the health sector was allocated US$444,7 million this year.
According to the CWGH, even if resources allocated to health-related issues in other ministries were added on, the health budget still fell short of the 15 percent Abuja target.

“Using the newly proposed approach, the allocation to health is 10,8 percent including non-discretionary appropriations, but goes up to 12,2 percent when the non-discretionary appropriations are excluded.

“However, in all the three approaches, the allocation to MoHCC still remains less than the Abuja target of 15 percent,” Mr Rusike said.