Job crises in the Health Sector
I have kept on reciting questions from the time I read about the 109 thousand of our Citizens who applied for the 11,200 available jobs in the Health sector. I have a lot of questions without answers, please help me to answer some of the questions:
1. How many Health workers do we have in Zambia?
2. How many potential Health workers are being manufactured in the medical schools across the country?
3. What is the current required numbers of Health workers in Zambia.
4. Is there need to freeze the training of Health workers and if so, for how long?
Note that we are working on the assumption that Data is wrangled, clean and therefore they are no duplicates.
The Numbers of the applicants has made me appreciate the problem we have as a country, let’s just assume for once that we freeze the training of medical students and redeploy them to other faculties such as Agriculture and bricklaying, then we focus to fully dismantle the backlog of 109,000 currently roaming the streets. This number at a current recruitment levels of 11,200 it will take 10 years, meaning that those who are 40 years now, would be 50 years old at the time of their first job if picked in the last batch. This is sad!
What could be the remedy?
1. If possible, to sign MOUs with countries that have scarce medical workers in the region & 🌎 for loaning our Citizens for at least 5 years. After the transfer window, they can come back with the much needed experience and free to start their own clinics while some can be employed in the public health facilities.
2. To deliberately encourage the veterans/gurus in medical space to open their medical facilities. They can be supported with seed money by the government for their initial investment and this can stimulate employment. One more incentive is that they can have access to NHIMA funding and Fairly treated like public health facilities. Those employed can strictly be at the same salary scale as those employed by the service public commission. I Know this is a tough call and less plausible.
3. This one is radical, ooops. Freeze the training of medical students for at least 5 years.
Thank you for reading about what is bothering my head!