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Herald Correspondent
THE Health Professions Authority of Zimbabwe (HPA) has registered more health institutions this year compared to last year as efforts to fight the Covid-19 pandemic continue.

This comes after the authority launched an inspection blitz early this year which established that pharmacies were selling kits that were not permitted for use in the country putting the lives of the public at risk.

Speaking at the HPA annual congress in Harare last week, association president Mr Ranganayi Mubvumbi said they were happy that more institutions had joined the authority which worked tirelessly throughout the year.

“HPA has been operating throughout the year 2021 although under restrictive lockdown measures. In terms of our core mandate of ensuring that inspections are done, HPA managed to do 75 percent of the planned inspections in 2021.

“More new health institutions were inspected and registered in 2021 than in 2020. These new institutions were established because of the prevalence of the Covid-19 pandemic. We did well in registering a significant number of new health institutions,” he said.

Mr Mubvumbi said health care standards and regulations were key during a pandemic outbreak to uproot arbitrage opportunities and illegal operations.

He said the authority would continue to consolidate that pole position and live up to its expectations in line with its mandate. HPA secretary-general Mr Shepherd Humure said going forward, the strategic imperative for routine inspections was to focus on both public and private health institutions and deployment of inspection teams to the provinces.

Mr Humure said: “This sweep scale inspection measure shall be a linchpin to launch the scientific risk based inspection, in line with international risk based regulation trends and best practice.

“We face the challenge of an inverted business model characterised by parallel market exchange rate driven costs and official bank exchange rate driven income.

“To address this challenge and in line with Section 44 and 45 of the Public Finance Management Act, a low cost and cost effective inspection approach shall be adopted, maximising each inspection trip through a full inspection basket mix which is initial, routine and investigative inspections.”