Online Reporter
Rumbidzayi Zinyuke
Senior Health Reporter
SPECIALIST medical care could soon become more accessible beyond Zimbabwe’s major cities, with Government creating over 300 specialist posts in the past two years and now targeting 320 vacancies – an expansion aimed at closing critical gaps in the country’s health system.
Permanent Secretary for Health and Child Care Dr Aspect Maunganidze said the Government created 125 specialist posts in 2025 and a further 178 this year, part of a broader plan to add 32 000 new health-sector posts nationwide by 2030.
The early results are measurable. The number of specialists actually in post rose by 73 in just six months, climbing from 234 in December last year to 307 by June 2026; tangible evidence, officials say, that the investment is translating into doctors on the ground, not just posts on paper.
“Zimbabwe has made steady progress in developing specialist capacity, with a growing pool of specialists across a range of medical and surgical disciplines,” Dr Maunganidze said.
“Government continues to invest in postgraduate education, specialist training and the expansion of specialist services. The largest increases were among physicians, general surgeons and anaesthetists, followed by obstetricians and gynaecologists, neurosurgeons and paediatricians.”
For a health system long strained by shortages in exactly these disciplines, that spread matters. Physicians, surgeons and anaesthetists form the backbone of hospital care; obstetricians and paediatricians are frontline defenders of maternal and child health, two of the metrics by which Zimbabwe’s health outcomes are most closely watched.
Growth in neurosurgery, a field requiring years of specialised training and among the hardest specialties to build locally, signals a system reaching for more complex, higher-order capability rather than simply adding numbers.
Dr Maunganidze was direct about why this matters: specialist doctors, he said, are critical to strengthening Zimbabwe’s health system and to achieving Universal Health Coverage – the principle that all citizens, regardless of income or location, should be able to access the health services they need.
Their development, he said, forms part of the broader national commitment under the National Development Strategy 2 (NDS2) to double the country’s health workforce by 2030.
The scale of the challenge is laid bare in the 2025 register of the Medical and Dental Practitioners Council of Zimbabwe (MDPCZ). Among selected specialties, 647 specialists were licensed to practise in the country, but only 462 were actually practising.
Physicians led the active ranks at 98, followed by obstetricians and gynaecologists at 93, paediatricians at 52, anaesthetists at 47, general surgeons at 46 and ophthalmologists at 42.
Even those figures overstate what is available to ordinary Zimbabweans relying on public health facilities, Dr Maunganidze cautioned, since registration numbers do not necessarily reflect who is actually serving the public system.
Some registered specialists work in the private sector, in academia, or have left the country altogether – a reminder that recruitment alone will not fix the problem unless it is matched by retention.
“Government is consequently strengthening coordination between the Ministry of Health and Child Care, the Health Service Commission, training institutions and regulatory councils to maintain an accurate and comprehensive picture of the specialist workforce and guide future planning,” he said. The specialist expansion sits within the Human Resources for Health Investment Compact, a framework designed to align training, recruitment, deployment and retention across the health sector.
It draws together the Ministry of Health and Child Care, the Health Service Commission, the ministries responsible for higher and tertiary education, finance, skills audit and development, and labour and social welfare, alongside universities, professional and regulatory councils and other stakeholders – a Whole-of-Government architecture reflecting how deeply specialist workforce planning now cuts across the country’s public institutions.
“However, as the health system expands and demand for specialised services increases, there remains significant work to be done to further increase specialist numbers, strengthen the skills mix and improve their distribution across the country,” Dr Maunganidze said.
“The current focus is therefore on ensuring that specialist production is aligned with national health needs, emerging disease patterns, service expansion and the requirements of provincial and referral facilities.”
To that end, Government is expanding postgraduate training places in priority specialties, increasing the number of accredited training sites, and strengthening clinical supervision and mentorship for trainees.
It is also broadening the pool of specialists qualified to train postgraduate students, supporting sub-specialisation, and drawing on regional and international training opportunities – including through the College of Surgeons of East, Central and Southern Africa – where local training capacity remains limited.
“The strategic direction is to progressively align specialist training with quantified national requirements, ensuring that the country develops the right skills mix for current and future health needs,” Dr Maunganidze said.
He added that retention remained a key priority, with Government pursuing better conditions of service, clearer career progression and expanded professional development, alongside opportunities for teaching, research and sub-specialisation. Investment in infrastructure, equipment, medicines and clinical support systems, along with targeted support for specialists posted to underserved areas, forms part of the same retention strategy – as does closer management of diaspora engagement and health-worker migration. More than 5 000 health workers were recruited in 2025 alone, with further recruitment continuing this year, part of the drive to double Zimbabwe’s overall health workforce by 2030.
“Government recognises that retaining specialists requires a combination of appropriate conditions of service, clear career pathways, professional development opportunities and an enabling working environment,” Dr Maunganidze said.
“The development of specialist doctors is being pursued as part of a broader whole-of-Government human capital development programme to double Zimbabwe’s health workforce by 2030.
Through this coordinated approach, Government is implementing a deliberate and sustainable programme to increase specialist capacity and ensure that the country’s health workforce continues to meet the evolving needs of the population.”
