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Lloyd Gumbo Herald Reporter
GOVERNMENT must finance construction of health facilities in resettlement areas and lift the ban on recruitment of health practitioners, parliamentarians have been told. Appearing before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health and Child Care on Tuesday, Health Services Board officials said there was an acute shortage of health practitioners in the public sector.

They said the ministry’s staff establishment was last reviewed in 1983 when the country’s population was about 7,5 million.
The population is now estimated at 13 million.

“The country has gone through an agrarian reform and this has basically meant people have been moved from their villages with established infrastructure into the jungle with nothing at all,” said HSB executive chairperson Dr Lovemore Mbengeranwa

“As a result of people being settled in areas where there were no health facilities there is need to establish such facilities and also find requisite staff.”

Zimbabwe’s population, he said, required 33 000 health professionals but there were presently only 24 000.
He said there were only 82 specialist consultants against an establishment of 347 while 814 doctors were employed against an establishment of 1 220.

Dr Mbengeranwa said about 5 800 nurses had been absorbed into the system from about 7 900 who were trained between 2008 and 2013.
For the Ministry of Health and Child Care to achieve goals set in the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation, the HSB said there was need for Treasury to unfreeze vacant posts, increase the staff establishment by 2015, create primary care nurses posts for mission and council health facilities, and improve salaries.