Zimbabwe loses half of health professionals

Zimbabwe loses half of health professionals

• Zim nurses face uncertain future in UK

• Zimbabwe doctors press on with strike

• 70% of Zim hospital staff quit

• Hospital fees up by 100 percent

• 'We just let them die'

• Doctors' pay hike buys 3 loaves

• Patient dies as fire guts Mater Dei

• Zimbabwe steps up nurse training

• Zimbabwe doctors strike over pay

• Mugabe's pay up by 14 percent

• Mugabe pay up 300 percent

By Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWE has lost half of its public health professionals in the last few years and is the African country hardest hit by a "brain drain" driven largely by economic hardship, a new report shows.

Skilled health staff have migrated mostly to Western Europe and some neighbouring African countries in search of better salaries and better work conditions, according to a report by the state-run Health Services Board.

So critical is the situation that junior doctors and inexperienced nurses form the bulk of personnel manning most of the institutions.

The embattled southern African country is struggling with a severe economic crisis many critics blame on President Robert Mugabe's government.

The health sector is struggling to function amid the crisis, which has brought shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency along with water and power cuts and an inflation rate of over 1,200 per cent.

The government's five major hospitals were operating with 36 senior doctors instead of 145, 72 specialist consultants instead of 189, and two specialist pathologists out of eight required, the report reveals.

By last December there was up to 89 per cent vacancies for laboratory technicians, 44 per cent for senior nurses and 88.4 per cent for primary care nurses, it added.

An estimated 3 million Zimbabweans - a quarter of the national population - have sought jobs and homes abroad, many of them illegally, as a result of the political and economic crisis blamed on Mugabe's increasingly controversial rule.

But Mugabe, 82, who has ruled the country since independence from Britain in 1980, rejects charges he has misruled Zimbabwe. He blames the economic crisis on sabotage by his opponents and Western sanctions imposed over allegations of political repression and land transfers.
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com