Health workforce to double by 2028

Rumbidzai Zinyuke Senior Health Reporter

Over the past decades, Zimbabwe has experienced a massive brain drain which has seen a many of the doctors, nurses and other professionals trained in this country moving to other countries, attracted by better pay.

While a professional core remains, public health services are strained.

Briefing a World Health Organisation headquarters delegation recently, Health and Child Care Minister Dr Douglas Mombeshora said Zimbabwe needed to boost its health force across the board.

“We cannot do it overnight, so we have taken a phased approach. At least when we have 40 000, this will be adequate to cover all our villages,” he said.

Zimbabwe has about 35 000 villages, so the doubling will ensure at least one health worker in every village, with extras that can be deployed in peri-urban settlements, larger villages and even urban areas.

“The second stage is now to say, those who are trained as nurses, doctors, as radiotherapists, all those other specialists, we need to increase the training, double the numbers again by 2028 to be able to meet the demand that we see in our country,” he said.

Government was committed to making Zimbabwe an appealing place to work for health workers within the country and to attract some of those who left to come home.

A health labour market analysis conducted by the Health Services Board (now upgraded to the Health Service Commission) in 2022 showed that Zimbabwe, along with Nigeria and South Africa were the leading foreign suppliers of nurses from Africa to the UK alone.

In 2021, the country had more than 2 000 nurses who had been officially registered to practice in the UK with more indicating intentions to migrate. If doctors and other health professionals are added to the mix, the figure for all workers in this sector who migrated to other developed countries was likely to more than double.