WHILE in Zimbabwe, with a population of around 14 million, medical schools have an annual intake of 280 medical students, the average for five Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member-states (Czech Republic, Sweden, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium) whose population levels (average
11 672 794) are similar to that of Zimbabwe is 17 581; see graphical illustration below:
Basic skills like medicine, pharmacy, general surgery, internal medicine, ophthalmology, radiation oncology, anaesthetics, neurosurgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, psychiatry and paediatrics are trained locally but need increased output commensurate with infrastructure and training facilities.
There is need to upscale the training of specialist skills such as dentistry, ear, nose and throat as well as histopathology training programmes.
While the optometry training programme commenced in 2018, it requires trainers with doctoral degrees in optometry.
There is a shortage of physiologists and anatomists to train medical doctors during preclinical years.
There is need to capacitate existing medical and health training institutions while expanding medical and health sciences to other institutions of higher learning to increase output.
There is need to establish new training programmes to cover the aforementioned gaps taking into cognisance new and emerging health technologies such as genomics and personalised medicine; virtual reality medicine; future of pharma; digital health sensors and wearables in healthcare; 3D printing in medicine; as well as medical robotics and artificial intelligence.
There is also need to expand international medical and health skills exchange programmes in order to build local critical masses.
There is need for focused prioritised training of medical specialists in countries that have best medical and health training facilities while the nation builds its own capacities locally.
Institutions should establish world-class medical tourism hospitals that promote cutting edge health research and services at affordable costs.
The medical and health sciences sector is an important stabilising force for any state’s economy.
The ability of the sector to grow while the rest of the skills sectors are contracting represents an important stabilising force for the economy.
It is the human resources of any nation, rather than its physical capital and material resources, which ultimately determine the character and pace of its economic and social development.
Healthcare technology innovation has created a new lens through which educators must re-interpret curriculum needs to address modes of delivering healthcare other than the historic face-to-face model in addition to preparing graduates to employ current diagnostic and treatment modalities and associated technology tools.