By Takunda Mandura
For many years, Zimbabwe has been battling with brain drain with the health sector being one of the worst hit.
The country’s health sector has been plunged into a crisis as poor remuneration and working conditions drive qualified health professionals to migrate to other countries.
Official statistics indicate that over 4 000 nurses and doctors have left Zimbabwe since February 2021.
While it is difficult for the Zimbabwean government to stop this exodus of professionals as doing so might breach citizens’ rights as vested in the country's constitution, the continued brain drain is increasingly becoming worrisome for the government.
According to the Zimbabwe Medical Association, the country only has 3 500 doctors to serve a population of 15 million.
British Home Office data shows that Zimbabwe is now in the top-five skilled workers’ visa recipient countries. More than 8,300 medical professionals were granted work visas by the United Kingdom between 2019 and September 2022.
Workers’ training
Even before the current trend of exodus, Zimbabwe was struggling to meet its requirement of 10 000 doctors to cater for its population as recommended by World Health Organisation (WHO) standards.
With significant numbers of Zimbabwean medical professionals now working outside the country, the government is engaging the United Nations as well as other multilateral agencies to help pay training costs, through fair compensation or financial collaboration, on the training of health workers.
In January 2023, a law was passed which stipulates that health professionals can only strike for up to three days because they are essential workers.
Frequent strikes by health workers have for years strained Zimbabwe’s public health services even as medical centres are already in a poor condition due to dilapidated infrastructure and medicine shortages.
‘A crime’
Zimbabwe's Vice President, Dr Constantino Chiwenga, who is also the country's Minister of Health and Child Care had disclosed that the government was planning to criminalise the recruitment of Zimbabwean health workers by other nations.
He described such the way and manner such recruitment is currently being done as a crime against humanity.
"If one deliberately recruits and makes the country suffer, that's a crime against humanity. People are dying in hospitals because there are no nurses and doctors. That must be taken seriously,” he said last April.
“Zimbabwe frowns at this heinous crime which is also a grave violation of human rights," he added.
But many blame the government for not making the healthcare sector in the country better with workers always complaining of low wages and dilapidated health facilities.
The economic conditions in the country with sharply rising cost of living are another reason for the brain drain.
Some of the recruiting countries are also desperate because they have been struggling with shortages of healthcare workers.
For example, in 2022, MPs in the UK found that England was short of more than 50,000 nurses and midwives as well as 12,000 hospital doctors.
Zimbabwe is one of the eight countries which were in March 2023 added to the WHO health workforce support and safeguards list 2023 since its original publication in 2020.
Of the 55 countries on the red list, 37 are in the WHO African region, eight are in the Western Pacific region, six are in the Eastern Mediterranean region, three are in the South East Asia region and one is in the Americas.
Under this new provision, developed western countries can only recruit professionals after signing government-to-government agreements.
In the past, health professionals could individually apply for health worker visas and get accepted in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, the US and Canada, among others.
Paralysed services
“Health workers are the backbone of every health system, and yet 55 countries with some of the world’s most fragile health systems do not have enough and many are losing their health workers to international migration,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesuss lamented recently.
Early this month, Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa said the needed medical services have been paralysed due to health workers continuously leaving the country in droves.
“Our children doctors, nurses and accountants; are professionals being taken by other countries because they are educated and they are being taken by London, Australia, Canada and America,” the president lamented.
But health workers described the enlisting of Zimbabwe as a beneficiary of the WHO arrangement restricting foreign recruitment of health workers as a major setback for health professionals in the country.
“The government has been sort of abusive in how it is handling the plight of nurses. Instead of addressing the root causes, it is coming up with a raft of measures to tie our already impoverished and starving nurses. The reason for the massive brain drain is due to measly wages. What we all expected the government to do was to swiftly address bread and butter issues,” Secretary-General of Zimbabwe’s Professional Nurses Union, Douglas Chikobvu, said.
Foreign remittances
Although Zimbabwe continues to experience brain drain, diaspora remittances account for 16% of the country’s foreign financial inflows and the figures are increasing.
According to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Zimbabweans abroad sent home $ 1.66 billion in 2022 up from $1.43 billion in 2021. The authorities believe if the professionals stay back at home, the benefits would be much more for the country.
Africa has the world’s youngest population with millions of young people joining the workforce every year – many migrating outside the continent.
According to a World Bank report, African migrants doubled between 1980 and 2019, reaching 30.6 million. This represents around 3% of the continent’s total population.
For decades, Zimbabwe's education system is respected as one of the best in Africa producing some of the excellent professionals in the continent - thanks to the administration of former president Robert Mugabe.
It is not yet clear whether the measures being taken by Zimbabwe will actually stem the health workers' exodus.
But as the southern African country continues to make efforts towards retaining its professionals, observers say the bulk of the solution lies within the country – improving the conditions of service including better wages and medical facilities as well as patriotism at all levels.
