Responding to questions from The Chronicle, Health deputy minister, Dr Aldrin Musiiwa said the country only has 12 psychiatric doctors at a time when mental cases are on the increase. He also revealed that Zimbabwe does not have the capacity to train psychiatric doctors but can only train nurses.
Said Musiiwa:
It’s true that we have about 12 psychiatrists for our public health institutions which is not so much of a shortage though we could do with more. The problem we have as a country is that we only have the capacity of training psychiatric nurses and not doctors which has affected us a lot. We have always relied on other countries for training and as we know Government salary scales are lower than other countries so it’s very difficult to retain them.
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