Cabinet Greenlights Health Workforce Plan to Achieve Upper Middle-Income Status

By Cimba Shepherd Nhamo

In a significant move towards achieving a sustainable and resilient health workforce, the Cabinet of Zimbabwe has approved the Health Workforce Strategy (2023-2030) and Health Workforce Investment Compact (2024-2026). This development is aimed at supporting the country’s goal of becoming an upper middle-income economy by 2030.

The Health Workforce Strategy focuses on five key areas:

1. Education, Training, and Development: Aligning health worker training programs with health sector needs, increasing annual training outputs from 3,334 to 7,000 by 2030, professionalizing and integrating community health workers, and refurbishing and expanding training schools infrastructure. This will ensure that health workers have the necessary skills and competencies to deliver quality healthcare services.

2. Deployment, Utilization, and Governance: Ensuring optimal deployment and utilization of health workers, strengthening governance and leadership, and improving health workforce management. This will ensure that health workers are deployed to areas where they are needed most, and that they are utilized effectively to deliver healthcare services.

3. Retention and Migration Management: Optimizing remuneration to reduce attrition rates, improving working conditions, and managing migration of health workers. This will ensure that health workers are motivated to stay in the public health sector, and that their skills and expertise are retained.

4. Monitoring and Evaluation, ICT, and Research: Strengthening health workforce management information systems, digitalizing health workforce management systems, and strengthening health workforce research to inform decision-making processes. This will ensure that health workforce data is accurate and reliable, and that research informs policy and decision-making.

5. Planning and Financing: Increasing per capita investment in health from $9 to $32 by 2030, with a long-term goal of $55 per capita, and ensuring sustainable financing for health workforce development. This will ensure that the health workforce is adequately funded to deliver quality healthcare services.

The approval of the Health Workforce Strategy and Investment Compact demonstrates the government’s commitment to addressing the challenges facing the health workforce and ensuring a robust and responsive health system.

Furthermore, Cabinet also approved the report on the Public Service Job Evaluation Exercise, which identified key issues such as:

– Functional duplications and overlaps in roles within and across line ministries
– Advancement via grade system, violating job evaluation principles
– Identical duties and jobs of chief directors and directors, rendering one job redundant
– Prevalence of dead-end jobs for specialists
– More managerial jobs than non-managerial jobs

The findings of the job evaluation exercise will lead to a comprehensive review of manning levels, rationalization of staff, up-skilling and re-skilling, adoption of a new compensation framework, and implementation of a new salary structure to conform to the principle of equal pay for equal work. This will ensure that the public service is optimized, efficient, and effective in delivering services to the public.

The implementation of the Health Workforce Strategy and Investment Compact, and the recommendations from the Public Service Job Evaluation Exercise, will require collaboration and coordination among various stakeholders, including government ministries, health training institutions, health workers, and development partners.