When Paidamoyo Magawa was told she had malfunctioning kidneys early this year, she began treatment immediately. For more than two weeks, Magawa took the prescribed medication, but her condition only worsened. “I tasted death,” she recalled.
The diagnosis, she later learnt, was wrong after a different doctor ordered new blood tests, which were analysed at another laboratory. When the retests were done, they showed that she did not have a kidney problem, but rather a minor urinary infection. Her experience is not unique.
Across Zimbabwe, patients and doctors are raising alarm over inconsistent test results from medical laboratories, a problem linked to the rapid growth of diagnostic testing facilities that, doctors say, do not always meet professional standards. In early 2020, Zimbabwe’s testing capacity was limited to a few public laboratories. But by December that year, the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MoHCC) had licensed 29 private laboratories for COVID-19 testing, bringing the total number of approved centres (public, NGO, and private) to 58.
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The centres included those owned by the government, non-governmental organisations and the private sector. This rapid expansion filled a critical need, but also exposed weaknesses. Some new labs lacked trained staff or validated equipment to perform reliable tests.
Others used rapid antigen kits with limited sensitivity, leading to false negatives and false assurances. The ministry itself warned that any result from an unauthorised laboratory would be treated as invalid under the Health Professions Act. After COVID-19, many of these labs continued operating, offering a range of other medical tests.
Even now, patients often take multiple tests at different laboratories, sometimes paying in scarce US dollars to confirm a diagnosis, several doctors confirmed during this investigation. Many clinicians said they now hesitate to trust results from lesser-known or smaller labs.
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