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Rejoice Makoni Herald Correspondent
Improving healthcare in all its facets for the benefit of people ranks among the Government’s top priorities, Health and Child Care Minister Dr Douglas Mombeshora yesterday told health development partners at a forum held in Harare.
As part of the implementation of the health sector coordination framework, and mapping strategic ways of working together, the inaugural forum was attended by development partners including Unicef, the World Health Organisation, Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), among others.
Dr Mombeshora said it was Government’s desire to improve primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, and quinary care for the benefit of its citizens.
“The health sector in Zimbabwe seeks to accelerate the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals and ensure universal health coverage for the population of Zimbabwe in line with the national Vision 2030,” he said.
“The roadmap to such important milestones is guided by the national health strategy 2021-2025 and its investment case which feeds into the Health and Wellbeing Thematic area in the National Development Strategy.
“The national health strategy 2021-2025 identified eleven strategic areas of focus to ensure good health outcomes for the population of Zimbabwe as we progress towards an upper middle-income economy by 2030 including increasing domestic funding for health to meet the 15 percent Abuja Declaration target and ultimately the US$84 per capita World Health Organisation threshold.”
The Abuja target is to move towards 15 percent of national budgets be spent on health.
Dr Mombeshora said there was need to improve the country’s health sector human resources’ performance because although the staff establishment of the public health sector stands at 58 544 this is still too low to meet national health needs.
“For Zimbabwe to satisfy its population’s health needs, the country requires at least 124 000 health workers including at least 40 000 village health workers by 2030.
‘‘To meet this target, the plan is to increase the annual training outputs from 3 871 in 2022 to at least 9 000 by 2030,” he said.
Dr Mombeshora reaffirmed Government’s commitment to improve health infrastructure and medical equipment for health service delivery.
WHO representative, Professor Jean-Marie Dangou, said WHO remains committed to supporting the Ministry of Health and Child Care in addressing major health and developmental challenges facing the country.
“WHO appreciates the Ministry of Health and Child Care’s implementation of the health sector coordination framework through the undertaking of technical working groups, health sector working group and this health development partners coordination forum meeting,” he said.
“We note the strong alignment of this initiative with the aspirations of the Sustainable Development Goals 3 Global Action Plan for Healthy Lives and Wellbeing.
“It indeed demonstrates dedication to stronger collaboration, and WHO is ready to support Government’s efforts to identify priorities and to plan and implement together as well as accelerate delivery of SDG3 and leaving no one behind.”
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