THERE has been a growing focus on health-care workforce for improved health outcomes.
The quality of medical and health sector skills plays a pivotal role in the performance of a nation’s healthcare system.
The functionality and growth of the healthcare sector are highly dependent on availability and quality of medical and health workforce.
Hence, focused national efforts are required to build a world class public healthcare system through critical skills. Zimbabwe needs more skilled medical and health human resources to deliver essential health interventions and increase the number of specialised healthcare professionals.
In order for Zimbabwe to provide world-class public medical and health services, it needs medical specialists — doctors who have completed advanced education and clinical training in specific areas of medicine (their specialty area) in the following critical skills:
– General medicine – The medical speciality concerned with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of adult diseases.
– Dentistry – Medical domain that specialises in treatment of diseases and other conditions that affect the teeth and gums, especially the repair and extraction of teeth and the insertion of artificial ones.
– Surgery – Medical specialism that performs surgery and treats diseases, injuries or deformities via operative or manual methods to physically change body tissues.
– Pathology – Medical specialism that studies the causes and effects of diseases and examines laboratory samples of body tissue for diagnostic or forensic purposes.
– Anesthetics – Specialism physician trained in administering anesthesia and pre-operative medicine.
– Obstetrics – Specialism concerned with childbirth and caring for as well as treating women in, or in connection, with childbirth.
– Gynecology – Specialism concerned with treating diseases of the female reproductive organs and providing well-woman health care that focuses primarily on the reproductive organs.
– Pediatrics – Specialism medical practice specialising in children and their diseases.
– Ophthalmology – Specialism in the branch of medicine concerned with the study and treatment of disorders and diseases of the eye.
– Psychiatry – Medical practice specialising in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness.
The audit revealed that there was an overall 95 percent skills shortage in the medical and health sector in Zimbabwe.
Table 7 shows that in the medical specialists category, there are only three specialist cardiovascular and thoracic surgeons to cater for heart disease patients; only 11 specialist radiotherapists and oncologists to deal with the rising number of people suffering from various types of cancers; 39 paediatricians to cater for all the 2 711 017 children under the age of 14, which is also not sufficient to reduce the child mortality rate of 57 per 1 000 live births in Zimbabwe and only one specialist clinical immunologist in the infectious medicine category, yet the country had been battling with sprouting cases of cholera and typhoid.
The percentage shortages were found to be mostly above 80 percent for all the medical fields.
For example, there is a deficit of surgeons (99,13 percent), medical specialists (99 percent) as well as obstetrics and gynaecologists (96 percent).
Table 7 shows summarised statistics for registered medical and pharmaceutical professionals in Zimbabwe as of March 2018.
It illustrates the 95 percent skills deficit currently existing in the cluster.
It also compares what Zimbabwe has from the Medical and Dental Practitioners Council of Zimbabwe as well as the Pharmacist Council of Zimbabwe against what is available in the OECD member-states (OECD Health Statistics Database 2017).
There are three medical and dental colleges in Zimbabwe which produce about 200 doctors and 15 dentists annually.
There are 0,2 physicians (doctors) for every 1 000 people in the country as compared to an average 4,42 for OECD member-states in 2015.