Online Reporter
Robin Muchetu, Health and Gender Editor
THE Government has mooted plans to train 7 000 health workers every year as it moves to address the critical shortage of health professionals.
In an interview last week on the sidelines of a tour of hospitals in Bulawayo, Health and Child Care Minister, Dr Douglas Mombeshora, said the ambitious target is designed to double the national health workforce by 2030, ensuring hospitals and clinics can keep up with a population that has more than doubled since independence.
“At independence, our population was 7,5 million and in the last census, we project that we are around 16,5 million yet we have not increased our establishment. We currently have about 26 health workers per 100 000 people, but WHO recommends 46,” he said.
“That means we must double our workforce and while this cannot happen overnight, our target is to achieve it by 2030. There is an urgent need for a review more important than ever as the population has doubled in the past 45 years,” said Dr Mombeshora.
He stressed that staffing shortages topped the list of concerns nationwide, with specialist doctors being the scarcest resource. For instance, UBH — a referral hospital — has no radiologist or pathologist, while Ingutsheni Central Hospital, the country’s biggest psychiatric institution, has just two specialist psychiatrists.
The minister was in Bulawayo last week, during which he toured the United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH), Mpilo, Ingutsheni and Cowdray Park Health Centre.
Ingutsheni chief medical officer, Dr Nemache Mawere, said they were struggling to meet mental health needs with such limited expertise.
“The hospital has a staff complement of 723 employees, including nurses, doctors, occupational therapists, social workers, psychologists and support staff. We have only two specialist psychiatrists,” he said.
Dr Mawere added that the hospital also faces a shortage of support staff, from security guards to psychologists and occupational therapists, while losing posts under the “use it or lose it” policy to other institutions.
He said they have started to train four of their general medical officers and they are enrolled at the University of Zimbabwe.
“They are now in part two, so that in a year, we will have three more psychiatrists. The other one is available in three years. Unfortunately, under the ‘use it or lose it’ policy agreed on by all chief medical officers and the Permanent Secretary, we are to lose four posts to Parirenyatwa and Chitungwiza Hospitals,” he said.
While psychiatry is an important area demanding adequate staffing levels, Ingutsheni is training just 15 mental health nurses per year, which is inadequate.
“Nurses continue to leave for other places, but the rate is slower. Retired nurses from Bulawayo City Council and elsewhere have also helped minimise our shortage.
“We continue to train mental health nurses and post post-basic nurses,” said Dr Mawere.
He said the hospital needs at least 100 mental health nurses trained annually to meet demand and right now they only produce 15.
Dr Mombeshora admitted that retention remains a major challenge as health workers continue leaving the country. He said the ministry would work with Treasury to improve remuneration so that Zimbabwe does not simply “train for export”.
“This also means we have to increase our training; we have to also increase our remuneration so that we train and retain because there is no point in training and then losing those that we will have trained,” he said.
Dr Mombeshora, however, said the ministry will increase its training to cover the gaps and also improve conditions of service.
“We need to agree on a remuneration package that will attract more people coming from outside to work in our country and retain those we train and increase training in all our institutions,” he said.
The minister said already, nurse training has been expanded, and the ultimate goal is to train 7 000 health workers per year to bridge the shortfall.
“For nurses, last year we started with 400 per intake and we have three intakes per year and now we are at over 600 per intake. Our target will be to train about 7 000 health workers per annum so that we can maintain and escalate the numbers that we need,” he said.
On specialists, Dr Mombeshora said recruitment from countries such as Cuba would continue in the short term, while Zimbabwe works on producing its own — a process that takes at least four years per specialist.
“Specialists are critical, and we are limited. That is why, while we expand training, we must also look at interim recruitment to cover the gap. We have challenges in terms of specialists.
“At the United Bulawayo Hospitals, we do not have a radiologist and a pathologist, yet it is a referral hospital. We have been recruiting from Cuba,” he said.–@NyembeziMu
