Health woes set to worsen

Zimbabwe's already strained health sector will come under even greater pressure after one of the country's biggest nursing schools failed to open. Harare Central Hospital has an annual intake of 180 nursing students, recruited three times a year in groups of 60. This year the nursing school could not open its doors to new students, due to a crippling shortage of tutors. Students who were to have started their training two weeks ago were turned away on 4 January, when hospital authorities said they would be called to return at a later date. An aspiring student nurse who was turned away told IRIN there was concern that the delays could be indefinite, thus robbing many of a chance to become professional health workers. Nurses and doctors who talked to IRIN said the nursing school had been left with only three tutors and needed a minimum of 15 to operate. The situation is set to worsen further as the three remaining tutors have all submitted their resignations. Harare Central Hospital superintendent Dr Christopher Tapfumaneyi confirmed that the school was experiencing difficulties. "Like any other profession, tutors are leaving for greener pastures," said Tapfumaneyi, who stressed that the problems facing the school were not linked to the recently ended three-month strike by nurses and doctors. Hospital officials who talked to IRIN on condition of anonymity said the hospital was losing its tutors to the private sector, and many had left to work in countries such as Britain and South Africa. Samuel Mabhiza, a former tutor now working at the private Avenues Clinic, told IRIN the main reason tutors were leaving was to better their salaries. "Tutors get slightly above Zim $200,000 a month (about US $243 at the official exchange rate) and yet the amount of work they do is enormous." Tutors are paid a salary equivalent to that of a senior nurse. Harare Central Hospital's nursing school is said to be under-equipped and the library virtually empty. Tutors therefore had to use their own resources to do research at the University of Zimbabwe and other private libraries. The shortage of teaching staff has also affected the progress of second- and third-year students. A final-year nursing student told IRIN that since November 2003 they had attended hardly any classes, as they had had to fill in for striking nurses at the hospital. "We are likely to fail to graduate this year because we don't have any lecturers at the moment, and we had to work full-time because our seniors were on strike," she said. The shortage of teaching staff at Zimbabwe's nursing schools has also affected training in specialised fields such as midwifery. The lack of new nurses is set to worsen Zimbabwe's health woes as many hospitals and clinics in the countryside are already facing staff shortages. A 2003 parliamentary report on the health situation in Zimbabwe noted that office orderlies and nurse's aides are manning many clinics in rural areas. Despite low salaries, thousands of secondary school graduates apply to become nurses, mainly because nurses almost always find employment - an important factor, given Zimbabwe's unemployment rate of over 70 percent. The high demand for nurses in Zimbabwe, the region, and internationally has also contributed to the popularity of the profession. Many view training as a nurse as a sure way of getting a visa to the United Kingdom, and an escape from Zimbabwe's worsening economic crisis.