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Dr Chimedza

Masvingo Bureau
Nurses who have not been recruited for the past years because of the Gvoernment job freeze in the civil service will have to be retrained upon being offered employment.
Health and Child Care Deputy Minister Dr Paul Chimedza yesterday said the unemployed nurses needed to be trained first before starting work as they would have lost most of the skills attained at nurse training schools owing to redundancy.

The development comes as thousands of qualified nurses are roaming the streets after a recruitment freeze across all Government departments that was introduced during the days of the inclusive government.

Government even considered exporting skilled nurses to other countries in the region as those who were churned out from nurse training schools could not be absorbed into various health institutions in the country.

Dr Chimedza said nurses would naturally lose their skills if they did not practice for more than two years.
“We will have to retrain our nurses who have not been employed for more than two years because of the recruitment freeze in the civil service before we offer them jobs at our health institutions because nurses lose their skills if they spend say two, three or four years without practicing after graduating from nurse training schools,” he said.

“The re-training of the nurses will be critical because they would have lost most of the skills because of idleness. They will have to undergo training for a few months to make sure that they are well equipped to start working in our health institutions.”

Dr Chimedza said Government should immediately lift the freeze on recruitment, especially for health workers.
He said it was ironic that Zimbabwe was mulling exporting qualified nurses to other countries, yet it was faced with a crippling shortage of skilled nurses.

Dr Chimedza said efforts to reduce maternal and infant mortality across the country in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) would remain a pipe dream unless Zimbabwe urgently unfreezes the recruitment of nurses and other health professionals. He said the nurse to patient ratio in Zimbabwe stood at one nurse per every 15 patients, yet the ideal situation would be one nurse for every four patients.

Dr Chimedza said the HIV and Aids scourge and other diseases such as cancer which affected large populations had immensely increased the burden on health professionals.