As the economy of Zambia deteriorates further, with the local currency exchanging for about 2,800 kwacha to the US dollar and many in the public sector earning below 60 dollars a month, more and more women are finding their way to traditional practitioners who are considered "cheap but effective."

A health ministry document entitled 'The Safe Motherhood Needs Assessment Report of 1996' gives information that shows that the status of safe motherhood in Zambia has always been linked to the availability of qualified staff, decent referral services, adequate drugs and medical equipment supplies. Now that the entire medical service care package is in disarray, it is little wonder that Zambian doctors have themselves come out in the open to back up demands for improved delivery of equipment and drugs from government.

"We as RDA (Resident Doctors Association) have endured the humiliating work environment to levels where we have been traumatised and distressed by the continued hopelessness of standing by the bedsides and speculating over death," Jonathan Tembo, president of the association said. He is unhappy that rather than consider them as allies for calling attention to the short-comings of the health sector, the government is seeing them as enemies. He argued that the situation was so bad that government hospitals are often without syringes, needles, cotton wool, plaster, sutures, gloves and operating theatre linen.

Other items that are hard to come by are sterilising agents, oxygen for the theatre, thermometers, reagents, specimen containers and life saving drugs like insulin, quinine, antibiotics, intravenous fluids and in some instances even reliable watersupplies. Flies and rats have become a common sight in operating theatres. "Shortages are getting worse by each day and we continue to record preventable deaths despite having the skills to intervene," Tembo said. "We as doctors are reminded of our calling and oath not to align ourselves to a deleterious scheme that perpetuates disease and death. We reiterate that we are doctors, not merchants of death," he added.

With such a gloomy situation, little wonder that Zambians in general and women in particular are turning more and more to traditional medicine with its repertoire of taboos and lethal "cures." Officials at the health ministry admit ignorance over the scope of abortions in Zambia because such information is usually suppressed by individuals and family members who are already aware that they can be prosecuted under the law.

But a recent study on factors associated with maternal mortality in Zambia estimates that 52 percent of women who die in child birth usually do so because they were trying to abort or as a result of complications resulting from miscarriages. The report notes that traditional beliefs and practices have in recent years taken a front seat in the minds of many Zambians as they turn more and more to traditional healers.

Panafrican News Agency, Feb. 10, 2000, Lewis Mwanangombe