Harare/Johannesburg - An international health rights organization has called for Zimbabwe's health-care system to be placed under international receivership, reports in neighbouring South Africa said Tuesday. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said in a statement, "We recommend the entire health system ... water, sanitation ... be handed over to world receivership," as reported by the South African Press Association (SAPA).
The organization said the United Nations should take charge of the health system in the southern African country that is facing its worst economic and humanitarian crisis.
PHR chief executive Frank Donaghue was quoted as saying public hospitals in Zimbabwe were without water and drugs, while health-care workers were unable to get to work because they could not afford the transport
"We believe an emergency health system needs to be put in place," Donaghue said.
"So we would hold that the United Nations now has the power to step in and set in some type of system to take over the health system of Zimbabwe," he added.
A cholera epidemic has claimed the lives of at least 1,700 people in Zimbabwe since late last year.
Tens of thousand have become infected amid a lack of clean drinking water, food and other chronic shortages.
