Zimbabwe’s health sector has suffered a gigantic blow with more than half of key medical professionals seeking jobs overseas, a state-run weekly reported Sunday.
“Zimbabwe is the country hardest hit by brain drain on the continent, resulting in the loss of over 50 percent of key professionals within the country’s public health institutions,” the paper wrote, according to ReliefWeb.
It quoted a government-commissioned report as saying there had been an exodus of doctors, nurses, midwives and laboratory experts, seriously undermining the healthcare system, already overstretched by the AIDS pandemic.
The report said the two leading hospitals in Harare had 36 doctors working against 145 earlier. It said there were 72 specialist consultants against the required 189. There were no chief pathologists in either hospital.
Eighty-nine percent of the laboratory positions and 44 percent of the nursing positions were vacant, it said.
The authorities attribute the exodus to Zimbabwe’s 1,200-plus percent inflation rate but also poor working conditions, inadequate equipment and “overbearing bureaucracy.”
