Govt set to overhaul health staffing system
GOVERNMENT is set to overhaul the staffing needs within the Ministry of Health and Child Care to come up with a fit for purpose staff compliment.
Speaking during a familiarisation tour of Mutare Provincial Hospital, Health Service Board (HSB) chairperson, Dr Paulinus Sikosana said the ministry’s staff establishment had not been revised in 30 years.
“The Ministry of Health staff establishment, as well as the structure itself, need to be revised to be fit for purpose,” he said.
“The staff establishment is from the 1980s and it was panel beaten in the early 1990s, but we did not have a comprehensive picture of the restructuring.”
Dr Sikosana said the HSB was working with the Ministry of Health and Child Care and Treasury on the Workload Indicator of Staffing Needs, a World Health Organisation tool that assists governments to review their staffing norms in line with the workload.
“It is an evidence-based tool that will assist us and the ministry to come up with a responsive staff establishment taking into consideration the infrastructure development that has happened since independence and since the last review, emerging disease conditions like HIV/AIDS and non-communicable diseases, which are chronic conditions that need a realignment of service delivery strategies,” he said.
“Again, there is the issue of the ageing population, which also needs different strategies of managing patients so all these require that the staff establishment be revised and the components of the various cadres to be fit for purpose.”
Most Government hospitals in the country are facing challenges that include shortage of skilled staff, drugs as well as obsolete equipment.
Dr Sikosana said the tour of Mutare Provincial hospital had been an eye opener on the needs of most hospitals in the country.
“It was an eye opener basically because this hospital has old infrastructure and has suffered from disrepair, like all other institutions in the country,” he said.
“We seem to have a problem of maintaining them basically because of resource constraints.
“We have the issue of equipment; it is evident that most of the equipment is dysfunctional, mostly because it has outlived its usefulness. There is need for a regular programme of replacement of equipment.”
Dr Sikosana said the shortage of drugs was also a problem that affected the health staff’s morale and the quality of work.
“For us as the employer, those are issues that we feel need attention,” he said. “Even though some of it is not in our purview, we have constant dialogue with the Ministry of Health itself so we will share info with them.
“We take the lead in the area of human resources in terms of recruitment, deployment and development.”
Speaking during the tour, Mutare Provincial Hospital acting medical superintendent, Dr Emmanuel Sedze outlined the need for more qualified health personnel to compliment the growth that the hospital had undergone in recent years.
“All our units are not properly covered; we need more manpower,” he said.
“We have several new units, which were not there at the establishment of the hospital. The hospital needs a physician, anaesthetist and a radiologist.
“We have a surgeon, but then we do not have an anaesthetist so we cannot help all patients here.”
Dr Sedze said the new units had no specialists hence the hospital referred most cases to Harare where patients received specialist treatment.
He said the psychiatric unit was dysfunctional.