Zimbabwe's health care system should be placed under international receivership, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said in Johannesburg on Tuesday.

"We believe an emergency health system needs to be put in place," said PHR chief executive officer Frank Donaghue, at the release of a report on findings made during a recent visit there.

"We recommend the entire health system... water, sanitation... be handed over to world receivership."

He said public hospitals were closed because they did not have water or drugs. Health care workers could not get to work because they could not afford transport, and Zimbabweans seeking treatment had little access to the hospitals because they too had no transport money.

He said the United Nations was the appropriate authority for receivership. When there was a threat to survival, and which could affect the entire region, they could step in.

"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."

Cholera, which had killed at least 1700 people there, and was affecting neighbouring countries, was a symptom of the collapse of the entire health system, Donaghue said.