When Good Tech Goes Bad

BCC's e-Health system poses challenges for patients. Image by Pixabay

BY DIVINE DUBE, Editorial Director | @Village_Scribe | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | OCT 30, 2020

In recent years, digital health has been touted as a potential savior of the global healthcare system, driving health into a data-first, low-cost industry worthy of the 21st-century. But in Zimbabwe, and in Bulawayo in particular, e-health is a death trap.

BULAWAYO (The Citizen Bulletin) — When we launched The Citizen Bulletin four years ago, we wanted to build a public-powered news service for audiences undervalued by traditional newsrooms — marginalized and low income communities in and around rural Matabeleland.

More often than not, traditional news outlets only produce journalism about — but not for — these communities and focus instead on an ideal user who already has the information and resources they need. That focus makes information and accountability gaps worse for communities that can least afford and access quality journalism.

With little or no resources, we believe we have stayed true to our mission: producing good reporting which combines nuance, rigour, human interest and accessibility. It is for this reason that we have begun the process of putting in place structures that will enable us to produce hyperlocal news in local indigenous languages.

We believe that good journalism must be accessible and that includes delivering it in languages understood by local audiences.

When the Coronavirus broke out early this year, our news outlet, just like many other news organizations across the country, began covering the pandemic. But unlike others, who continued reporting other issues alongside the ongoing health crisis, we decided to channel our resources towards covering only the virus and its fall-out.

We also took a decision to focus only on Matabeleland North and South, our priority audiences, temporarily leaving our home city Bulawayo — which like the capital city Harare — became the focus of legacy news coverage as central government authorities announced a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the virus.

As the virus fades away, we’re happy to announce that we will now be able to cover Bulawayo’s underreported issues. We believe that audiences in this historic city need our attention. Although the city is host to many news outlets and news bureaus, we believe its audiences are starved of quality, impact-focused journalism they need to be agents of good governance and social progress.

The city is faced with a plethora of challenges that include a debilitating water crisis, housing backlog, poor roads and many other service delivery gaps caused in part or in whole by bad governance.

We believe The Citizen Bulletin has a big role to play in shining a light on these issues. As we continue with our mission to serve Matabeleland audiences, we plan to produce hard-hitting accountability and dat-driven reporting to spotlight important local issues, especially in Bulawayo where we’re based.

We’re not shifting from our COVID-19 coverage yet, but we believe that our fragile democracy and our communities depend on journalists being able to do high-impact reporting that holds institutions accountable.

In this bi-weekly news round round-up, we shine a light on a variety of public interest issues which include the rise of domestic violence against women amid COVID-19, a bleak farming season for villagers who depend largely on shared labour, ballooning debts in schools used as government quarantine centres and adolescent pregnancy caused by poverty and vulnerability of teenage girls, a result of the aftershocks of the pandemic.

Our latest coverage carries a story from Bulawayo in which we spotlight challenges triggered by the city’s failed E-health platform launched at the height of the pandemic. Recently, the platform reportedly suffered connection challenges and left scores of patients in one of the city’s clinics seething with frustration.

We would like to commend city authorities for embracing technology in service delivery, especially healthcare which is far the most important at a time governments are struggling to halt a global health crisis. In many under-developed cities, the internet is still not accepted as an instrument of healthcare. Hospitals often have weak WiFi systems, which makes it harder for e-health systems to function properly.

We believe that for BCC authorities to experiment with an e-health system at this time is irresponsible as it exposes locals, especially the terminally ill, to risks of suffering failed treatments. Though this was long overdue, it could have waited and launched when the pandemic has receded.

For a city located in a country with a comatose healthcare system, we believe it’s an unnecessary burden for the local authority to experiment with an innovation which might worsen access to healthcare for people who need it the most especially during a pandemic. We urge the city to revert to traditional ways of healthcare while proper structures are put in place to ensure that digital health services function properly and are adopted fully by both caregivers and patients.

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We would like to work with a community of practice with aligned values. If you are interested in collaboration, advising us or creating meaningful partnerships we want to hear from you. Send us an email or WhatsApp message on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or +263 71 863 6460 respectively.

Let’s work together towards a collaborative local journalism future for communities who need quality news and information now more than before.