Zimbabwe nurses seek better conditions abroad but fear for patients at home

Health workers outside the country say they still check on their patients in Zimbabwe as its health sector deteriorates.

Harare, Zimbabwe – In December 2021, Setfree Mafukidze, his wife and four children moved to Somerset in Northern Ireland, joining a long list of health workers who have fled Zimbabwe to escape economic and political turmoil.

For four years, he had worked as the head nurse at the only clinic in Chivu, a town about 140km (90 miles) south of Harare.

By his estimate, he cared for more than 10,000 people there. Despite earning only about $150 a month, he would often dip into his own pockets to pay his patients’ bills.

Once, a patient with meningitis needed $200 to buy lifesaving medication, a huge sum in a country where a third of the population live on no more than $1 a day. Neither the patient nor his mother had the funds, so Mafukidze appealed to well-to-do Zimbabweans in the diaspora to help. After they did, he drove back and forth to the capital, Harare – a 12-hour journey in all – to get the drugs.

For Zimbabweans who saw people like Mafukidze as heroes, their departures are seen as a great loss.