Lifeline for 20 000 health workers

Source: Lifeline for 20 000 health workers | The Sunday Mail

Dr Mombeshora

Emmanuel Kafe

In a move to ensure critical healthcare services continue uninterrupted, the Government plans to recruit nearly 20 000 health workers dumped by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

This initiative will help mitigate the disruption caused by the loss of funding and ensure the continuity of critical healthcare services throughout the country, particularly in primary care and opportunistic infection clinics.

The affected workers include doctors, nurses and village health workers, whose positions were heavily reliant on US government support through USAID.

There were over 1 000 doctors and nurses who played a significant role in opportunistic infection clinics and nearly 19 000 village health workers who were crucial for primary healthcare in the country.

Approximately 15 000 of these workers were receiving payments from partner organisations prior to the funding cuts and from the Government

Speaking at last week’s Ministers Meet the Media engagement, Health and Child Care Minister Dr Douglas Mombeshora said: “We, as the Ministry of Health, have already planned to take over all health workers under the ministry’s employment.

“There were accountability issues because some health workers employed by NGOs (non-governmental organisations) and partners had unclear reporting structures. At times when they were absent, we didn’t know their whereabouts.”

Dr Mombeshora said discussions with the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion on securing funds for the recruitment started last year.

“We had already started these discussions last year to say all workers in the health system must be put under the Ministry of Health and if partners are coming in to help us, they can come in and top up, but all employees must belong to the ministry,” he said.

“Treasury is actually mobilising funds to make sure we take over all these workers and make sure they will be on our payroll, including even recruiting extra ones, because we have a compact way we agreed that we need to double our health workforce by the year 2030.”

The recruitment drive is expected to stabilise the healthcare system, which has been strained by the sudden withdrawal of donor support.

He said the intervention would help retain skilled health professionals and maintain essential services, especially in rural and hard-to-reach areas, where village health workers serve as the first point of contact for patients.

The USAID funding cuts, triggered by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, have impacted Zimbabwe’s HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria programmes.

In response, the Ministry of Health has implemented a redeployment strategy to prevent understaffing at health facilities.

“We made sure there was no facility manned solely by employees paid by our partners or NGOs. Our goal is to ensure no service is disrupted,” he said.

Dr Mombeshora said the Government had enough stocks of antiretrovirals (ARVs) and patients should not panic and hoard medicines.

“We have enough ARV stocks until the end of June. However, shipments meant to cover the period from June to December have been stopped and we cannot wait for the outcome of the 90-day review process before acting,” he said.

“In terms of service delivery, in terms of those who are on HIV and AIDS treatment, there will be no disruption; there will be no shortage of any medicines. No one should actually be scared; no one should actually start worrying.”