Zimbabwe is facing a serious brain drain crisis, with many skilled healthcare workers leaving as a result of low pay and poor working conditions. Professionals are migrating to countries that offer better opportunities such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and Canada, which is deepening the crisis that Zimbabwe’s healthcare sector has been experiencing for years.
Against this backdrop, the World Health Organization (WHO) has added Zimbabwe to its “red list” of countries facing severe health worker shortages.
More and more abroad, fewer and fewer at home
Home Affairs Minister, Kazembe Kazembe, recently indicated that “between June 2023 and June 2024, a total of 35,938 Zimbabweans were granted work visas to the UK, mostly as healthcare workers”.
These statistics reflect the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) announcement in 2019 that it had employed more than 4,000 Zimbabwean healthcare professionals, comprising doctors, nurses and clinical support staff. This made Zimbabwe the second-largest African contributor to the NHS workforce after Nigeria.
Although statistics for other countries are scarce, in view of the fact that Australia comes second after the UK in terms of the employment of Zimbabwean healthcare workers and by adding the opportunities opened up by Canada, Ireland and other countries that face shortages of doctors and nurses, then the bigger picture of the constantly deteriorating healthcare system in Zimbabwe can be seen.
In the meantime, Zimbabwe is faced with a chronic shortage of healthcare workers, with the country reporting 1,724 doctors and 17,245 nurses employed in public hospitals in late 2022 for a population of over 16 million people. Although slightly more than the 1,414 doctors and 15,353 nurses in 2020, these numbers are far from being sufficient for a country whose population is constantly growing as well as being nowhere near the recommended WHO standard of 10,000 doctors to serve a population of its size.
Officials cautiously optimistic
Speaking to the Director General of the International Organisation for Migration, Minister Kazembe said that addressing this emigration trend may prove “challenging” due to the varied reasons that are driving it.
“However, it is equally possible to replenish lost and or required skills through sound policies,” he added.
In 2023, Zimbabwe’s Vice-President, Constantino Chiwenga, announced plans to introduce a law that made it illegal for foreign countries to recruit Zimbabwean health workers.
“Deliberately recruiting healthcare professionals and causing a country to suffer is considered a crime against humanity. This issue is particularly dire in Zimbabwe where hospitals are struggling to cope with the loss of nurses and doctors, resulting in preventable deaths. The country views this as a heinous crime that severely violates human rights”, he commented.
In an attempt to solve the shortage issue, Zimbabwe is making substantial investments in training doctors and nurses, with the cost of training a single doctor estimated to be about US$70,000 annually.
Gloomy reality
However, when students qualify and find work as doctors or nurses, they are faced with poor working conditions and meager salaries that make it barely possible to live a dignified life. Nurses earn about US$250 monthly on average, whereas a doctor’s average monthly salary stands at about US$450. In contrast, even the least experienced healthcare workers can earn approximately US$2,500 per month in the UK.
To further exacerbate the situation, Zimbabwe’s healthcare system has been seriously impacted by mismanagement and worsening conditions, both of which have been intensified by the country’s economic downturn. According to the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, the year-on-year inflation rate for April 2024, as indicated by the all-items Consumer Price Index, stood at 57.5%.
Healthcare workers frequently engage in industrial action to protest about inadequate compensation and unfavorable working conditions. However, Zimbabwean law limits health professionals’ strikes to three days, as frequent industrial action puts further pressure on public health services that have already been compromised by dilapidated infrastructure and medicine shortages.
