“Zimbabwe’s vision is to have a healthcare system that reflects international best practice by 2030. The desire is to have a national health system that ensures that all members of society have equitable access to healthcare services, thereby leaving no one behind,” said Health minister, Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga while discussing his new restructuring exercise of the ministry. BY Phyllis Mbanje Stakeholders are sceptical because Zimbabwean authorities’s conduct are synonymous with lip service.They say if the bungling in the management of COVID-19 is anything to go by, the country has a lot of catching up to do. This will require substantial funding, training of personnel and above all plugging corruption loopholes. The new Health minister’s zeal is commendable, but a huge task lies ahead for him. How the country conducts its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic will determine the future for the healthcare system. To date there are few success stories and plenty failures since the first case was recorded in March. The testing deficit Zimbabwe is trailing behind other countries in the region. There is a myriad of challenges from inadequate test kits, delays in releasing test results especially for those using public facilities. The cost for private tests is quite prohibitive ranging from US$40 to US$70. Of the 15 million plus Zimbabweans, only slightly over 200 000, about 1% of the population, have been tested since March.In South Africa, close to four million people have been tested, which is about 5% of its population. From the onset, there were concerns over low levels of tests as evidenced by the number of tested cases. Until recently, there was only one National Microbiology Reference Laboratory located at Sally Mugabe Central Hospital in Harare. It received samples from all provinces for testing and this soon became overwhelming for the staff and the equipment which could only test up to 400 samples per day using the real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machine. The PCR diagnostic method has a 100% accuracy rate and the testing process takes about five hours. There were delays in getting results also because of what the government called total quality management, the tested samples were sent to South Africa for further confirmation of the results. Stakeholders have been raising alarm over complacency, saying this would give people a false sense of security and result in recklessness. “Continued constraints in accessing diagnostics (PCR) kits in the country has been limiting our case detection despite the reasonable surveillance capacities. “Testing for COVID-19 has increased as have the reported cases. However, there is need to distinguish between rising reports of COVID-19 due to rising testing and a real rise in the rate of the pandemic incidence,” Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) executive director Itai Rusike said. 'For Zimbabwe, where testing rates are much lower, the rising cases may signal wider suggestions that increases in case numbers are not simply due to rising testing levels, bu