Chronicle Editor
Thandeka Moyo-Ndlovu, [email protected]
GOVERNMENT has been commended for setting up the Health Service Commission to look into the welfare issues for health workers who are essential in helping Zimbabwe achieve goals of ensuring access to quality health care for all.
In a statement to mark today’s Workers Day, the Community Working Group on Health director Mr Itai Rusike said the commission should work hard to bring an end to the brain drain, which has seen the country lose several qualified and experienced health workers.
“The Community Working Group on Health (CWGH) applauds the Government of Zimbabwe for setting up the Health Service Commission that, among other tasks, is mandated to look into the welfare of health workers in the country.
“The new Health Services Commission must address the glaring management and governance issues in health, and ensure that the employer of choice for all health workers is central government as was the case in the past.
“Managing a professional workforce requires technical skill and capacity, but also humane traits and compassion that we find missing in the public health sector. This largely accounts for the mass exodus of our highly trained health workers to offer their young productive lives elsewhere,” said Mr Rusike.
“Furthermore, these workers require tools of the trade, which in turn must be effectively and efficiently managed, be they infrastructure, medicines, equipment, ambulances, service vehicles, and new technologies to make their work less tedious and in line with current best practices than it currently is.”
He said the Health Services Commission should tackle the huge “elephant in the room” of convincing the Treasury to increase allocation and timely disbursements to health so that they stem the accelerated brain haemorrhage of expensively trained healthcare workers.
“Healthcare workers (HCWs) continue to be trained but fail to fill the posts established in the 1980s, let alone the posts and establishment required to deal with the current population, disease epidemiology and health and development targets,” said Mr Rusike. “They have continued to enrich other establishments and countries while the gap they leave in the country’s institutions continues to widen. All Village Health Workers must be employed by the Ministry of Health and Child Care, and their allowances and training must be standardized and paid by the Government with donors only coming in to complement the government effort.”
The HSC was established through the Health Service Amendment Act of 2022, replacing the Health Services Board and is mandated to administer the conditions of service of its members in the State health services.
President Mnangagwa appointed Dr Vincent Hungwe as chairperson of the new seven-member Health Service Commission (HSC) being deputized by highly experienced medical practitioner Dr Abigail Rugare Kangwende in January.
The other five commissioners are former Permanent Secretary for Health and Child Care Major-General (Rtd) Gerald Gwinji, Dr Edward Makondo, Mr Engelbert Mbengwa, Mrs Josephine Mwakutuya and Mrs Mercy Sibongile Gwaunza.
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