President Emmerson Mnangagwa said that the government has to improve remuneration and conditions of service for medical practitioners to curb brain drain in the health sector.
Writing in his weekly column published in The Sunday News, Mnangagwa said the government will give land for free to those who wished to set up medical facilities. He said:
We have to competitively reward our doctors in order to guarantee greater staff retention in our hospitals, and in the country.
Many of our doctors continue to leave the country for greener pastures; they are hotly sought after, particularly in the rich West, because of their superior training facilities.
The Second Republic has to treat in-country medical staff retention as a foremost national goal.
More visible and substantive steps will be taken in the near future to improve the working conditions for our medical staff.
Mnangagwa bemoaned the doctor-to-patient ratio in the country which he said was too low. He said:
The number of medical practitioners in the country remains unsatisfactorily low. I am told we have 3 777 registered medical practitioners in the country.
Of this number, 1 982 are General Medical Officers; 713 are specialists; 250 are dentists, while 627 are interns. We have to boost our medical corps.
This programme will continue until every village and community is within reach of a medical facility, for basic health provisioning.
Alongside this thrust, we continue to invest in district hospitals until the goal of a fully functional hospital for each district is met.
I also wish to see more and more mobile healthcare services reaching remote communities.
We have done that in the past, allowing mobile clinics manned by specialist doctors to reach such historically disadvantaged communities for superior care.
As in other sectors, no person and no community should be left behind.
He said the government is building rural health facilities in both urban and rural areas, with some projects funded through Devolution Funds.