CONGRATULATIONS to Jimayi Muduvuri for successfully lobbying for private nurse training as he becomes the first applicant to be granted permission to train nurses in Kadoma.
Although the students will do their hospital attachments at Kadoma General Hospital, he has worked hard to make sure he has adequate training infrastructure at Muduvuri Pan African Hospital, where lectures will take place.
Great Zimbabwe’s Mashava Hospital should be the next in line and if permitted, will become the second private institution to train nurses.
The infrastructure is ready and what is only left is the nod from the relevant authorities.
The country is in dire need of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, environmentalists.
Great Zimbabwe University is applauded for introducing a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Health commencing in 2026 and that is good news for Masvingo and the nation at large.
Zimbabwe aims to be an upper-middle-income economy by 2030 but strong focus should be on good governance, economic stability, infrastructural development, inclusive growth and social development.
Key pillars include fighting corruption, global re-engagement, entrepreneurship, technology advancement in a bid to improve citizens’ quality of life and create opportunities, aligned with AU Agenda 2063 and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
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The National Health Strategy aims to build a resilient, sustainable health system, tackling challenges like climate change, disease and improving maternal/child health in order to meet global health goals.
A resilient health system is only possible when all six building blocks are in place as outlined by the World Health Organisation in 2007.
The six building blocks include human resources, health financing, medicines, governance, health informatics and service delivery.
If one pillar becomes shaky, that means the entire structure is unstable, with the possibility of collapse.
No builder can continue with the construction of a skyscraper if the foundation pillars are under threat of collapse.
Health workforce has been topical in the country for the past years as the rate of emigration is unprecedented in a nation of about 16 million people.
Media reports show that at least 5 000 health workers have left the country in the past three years for greener pastures, where working conditions are said to be better.
Zimbabwe continues to train doctors, nurses, pharmacists, radiographers, but the rate of worker turnover is alarming, leaving the country reeling from the effects of understaffing in clinics and hospitals.
The ideal nurse to patient ratio is supposed to be around 1:6, but it is no brainer to tell that in some places, the ratio can be 1:30.
This is catastrophic considering the high degree of nurse burnout, automatically compromising patient care.
The doctor patient ratio should be around 1:1 000 globally, but there are some instances in the country where the ratio can exceed 1:10 000, a situation which is detrimental to good patient care.
Zimbabwe is running today with a shortage of nurses, with the number exceeding 14 000, a figure which can only be filled either by training more nurses or attracting trained nurses.
What now matters is the quality of our staff retention strategy as a country.
We have seen our nurses migrating even to regional countries like Namibia and we should continue asking ourselves why it is not vice-versa.
Have we witnessed any South African nurses coming to work in Zimbabwe?
We should be ashamed as to why even Malawian nurses are not interested to work in our country.
Why are regional doctors lacking interest to migrate to Zimbabwe and work in government hospitals?
That alone calls for a serious health strategy to woo as many medical staff as possible, alas, nothing of that sort is happening in the country.
The country has enough training capabilities, with at least 22 nurse training institutions.
It is unfortunate that bureaucracy continues to stall training progress in the country.
Zambia is churning out thousands of nurses even from private nursing schools.
In Zimbabwe, it is still taboo for private institutions to train nurses.
There was a fight in 2025 between the Nurses Council of Zimbabwe and the Harare Institute of Public Health over the training of what were to be called primary care nurses.
The Nurses Council of Zimbabwe disowned the nursing programme at Harare Institute of Public Health, a development I felt was very unfortunate and unwarranted considering the huge nurse gaps in the country.
If the country can absorb nurses trained in Zambia, why are we rigid on our local institutions that want to do the same?
The world is moving and such rigidity is uncalled for.
I applaud President Emmerson Mnangagwa for ordering ministries to get rid of unnecessary rigidities and unfair bureaucratic tendencies that derail national progress.
There are some practices that exist to stall progress in the country.
