1. Expenditure on Health

    Maternal and child health is officially free in Zanzibar but the situation on the ground is different.
    Numerous laboratory investigations cannot be done in public hospitals, and even if they can be done patients have to share in the costs for those. The prices vary between TSH 500 (USD 0.31) for ‘routine urine’ to TSH 40.000 (USD 25.00) for ‘histopathology’ and are considerably cheaper than the private facility.Maternal Health Care is officially free in Zanzibar but the situation on the ground is different.

    1. Human Resources

    While the term Human Resources is widely used it is good to realize that we are talking about human beings as ‘resource’ and need to not forget that. It is important to realize that there are many different, and sometimes not comparable cadres of health workers. The two cadres providing (advanced) medical care are physicians or medical doctors (MD) and Assistant Medical Officers (AMO) and they are combined. It just gives a rough and clear picture as to how few health workers there are in certain parts of the world, including Zanzibar.

    1. Maternal Health

    Maternal health obviously encompasses much more than labour and delivery alone. It is embedded, or should be, in the whole field of reproductive and sexual health, dealing with issues of family planning, cervical cancer screening, nutrition, ante-natal care (ANC) etc.. The statistics given here allow just a small glimpse into the deadly tragedy that is unfolding around labour and delivery.