Abstract
This chapter analyses the role of the Zimbabwe Church Health Association (ZACH). The author discusses the role of the missionaries in the provision of health care in the country. Further, she analyses the partnership between church hospitals and the government after independence. She maintains that during the crisis years church hospitals continued to operate when government hospitals ground to a halt. The chapter underscores the role of the churches in contributing to health in Zimbabwe.
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Notes
- 1.
For more information on protected villages, see N. J. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
- 2.
Socio-economic vulnerability in this context is defined as “a process in which people are subjected to economic and social re-engineering in such a manner that they are left with little or no options of pursuing sustainable socio-economic survival strategies.” For more information on this, please see Zimbabwe Human Development Report 2003, Redirecting our responses to HIV and AIDS : Towards reducing vulnerability-the ultimate war for survival (University of Zimbabwe Publications: Harare, 2003).
- 3.
This figure was slashed to thirty-three years for women and thirty-seven years for men during the period 2005–2009—the world’s lowest. See Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR), ZADHR statement on World Health Day, April 2008. http://www.kubatana.net/html/sectors/zim065.asp?orgcode=ZIM065&year=0&range_start=1 (20 March 2009).
- 4.
Most aid organisations had to bring their services to a halt in 2008 after having been given stern warnings by the ruling party militias that threatened to punish any aid workers that would be seen distributing aid in the rural communities; they were all accused of politicking rural folk.
- 5.
For more information on this subject, see Chirongoma S (2012) “In Search of a Sanctuary: Zimbabwean Migrants in South Africa” in Joel Carpenter (ed) Walking Together: Christian Thinking and Public Life in South Africa (ACU Press: Texas).
- 6.
These disruptions worsened during the infamous Murambatsvina clean-up operation which was initiated in 2005. For more information on this subject, see Chirongoma S (2009) “Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Restore Order): Its Impact and implications in the era of HIV and AIDS in contemporary Zimbabwe” in Ezra Chitando and Hadebe Nontando (eds) Compassionate Circles: African Women, Theologians Facing HIV: (Geneva World Council of Churches Publications, 2009).
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Chirongoma, S. (2020). Church-Related Hospitals and Health-Care Provision in Zimbabwe. In: Chitando, E. (eds) The Zimbabwe Council of Churches and Development in Zimbabwe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41603-4_9
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