Unfreeze nursing posts, Govt urged

Paidamoyo Chipunza: Senior Health Reporter
There is need for Government to unfreeze all nursing posts to enable new and existing health institutions to ease staff shortages amid revelations that there is a serious shortage of nurses throughout the country.

Presenting findings from a community mobilisation programme that the Women Action Group was running in six districts recently, its director Ms Magaret Masiiwa recently said that some institutions were running on one qualified nurse who bore the burden of attending to all patients.

Ms Masiiwa said in such scenarios, such clinics sometimes closed their doors to patients if the only nurse available failed to report for duty, hindering smooth provision of healthcare services.

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“In our programme, we were encouraging communities to take up health services but in the process we noted several challenges that impeded access to health services. “We noted that there is a limited number of health workers at rural health centres which puts a strain on the available cadres,” said Ms Masiiwa.

She said this contributed to bad attitudes towards patients by some health workers due to burn out.

Ms Masiiwa said there was need for Government to prioritise recruitment of nursing staff to ensure an effective health service delivery system. Other institutions working in communities also revealed that new clinics constructed by communities were also lying idle as Government failed to deploy nurses due to the job freeze policy.

In a recent interview by The Herald, Health Services Board chief executive Ms Ruth Kaseke said although Treasury has been supportive in specialist healthcare areas, little progress had been made in the nursing area.

“The kind of support that we have always been having has been in the specialised areas, Treasury has always been supportive in unfreezing the posts but what we require in big numbers are the nurses and this is where we have not made much progress,” said Ms Kaseke.

She said there were about 3 000 nurses who were out of employment yet there was greater need for their skills. According to the 1980 establishments, the Health sector requires about 33 000 health workers but an estimated 23 000 are in service leaving a gap of about 5 000 vacancies.

Ms Kaseke said the HSB would soon embark on a national academic assessment to ascertain the number of health cadres required considering the growing burden of care. She said a pilot study has already been completed and the national roll out is expected to start early next year.

“This is a critical assignment for the country because it will assist us, not only in terms of generating numbers, but even with deployment on who we need (and) where,” she said.

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