Private hospitals lack staff, says HPCZ

IT IS not enough for private hospitals to have beautiful buildings without adequate human resource to offer quality healthcare services, says Health Professional Council of Zambia (HPCZ) registrar Aaron Mujajati.

In an interview, Dr Mujajati said the HPCZ had been increasing its capacity to enhance its inspectorate mandate to ensure compliance by health operators to match their standards.

“HPCZ has been interacting with stakeholders to try and improve compliance levels by health institutions. It is not enough to have beautiful buildings with no people to work there,” Dr. Mujajati said.

He said the Council wanted to see high level compliance in both private and public health institutions to ensure all players in the health sector offered safe services to the public. “We are trying to encourage people that we need to get our priorities right, that people should begin by ensuring they have correct personnel in place and even as they are building these nice looking buildings, they must ensure they have right personnel to man them,” he said. He said Minister of Health Dr. Chitalu Chilufya’s recent directive was in tandem with the Council’s strategic plan to ensure compliance and that it was a welcome encouragement for HPCZ to push for high standards across the health sector.

Last week, Dr. Chilufya called on the HPCZ to revoke any private hospital and clinic’s operation licence for failing to comply with staffing requirements including expert personnel for those claiming to be specialised hospices.