Shepherd Mhofu is disgusted. Recently qualified as a doctor, he is doing his residency at Harare’s Parirenyatwa hospital.
”I have to perform D and Cs [womb scrapes] on women without anaesthetic. I must tell families of critically ill patients that they must buy intravenous drips and medicines. We must perform surgery without gloves,” said Mhofu (26) inhaling deeply from a cigarette.
”I see patients suffering and dying needlessly because we are working in an unprofessional environment. The medical school should have trained us to work in medical conditions from 200 years ago.”
Mhofu said he is not paid enough to feed his family, let alone buy a car. ”We are paid so little that all of us in the medical profession think about going overseas,” he said. ”I don’t want to go, but I want to work in modern conditions. I want to be paid enough to support my family. That means I must go to Britain, or maybe Australia.”
Zimbabwe’s brain drain has hit the medical profession particularly hard. More than 80% of doctors, nurses and therapists who graduated from the University of Zimbabwe medical school since independence in 1980 have gone to work abroad, primarily in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, according to recent surveys.
The exodus has badly affected the country’s crumbling health system. The country has fewer than half the 1 500 doctors needed to staff government hospitals adequately.
The University of Zimbabwe is operating with less than 50% of its lecturers. The medical school is so badly affected that the annual intake of new stu dents has been reduced from 120 to 70.
”Even that is not helping,” said one lecturer. ”My department has dropped from 12 lecturers to three. The standards of teaching are dropping too.”
President Robert Mugabe has accused Britain of ”stealing” doctors and nurses from Zimbabwe.
”We have created the environment that allows the upliftment of nurses. That’s why even Britain comes in the dead of night to steal our people. They are recruiting pharmacists, doctors and nurses,” he said last year.
But Zimbabwean doctors dispute Mugabe’s assessment. ”We are not being stolen,” said a bitter Mhofu. ”We are seeking better pay and better standards. No one can blame us for that. The government would rather spend money on the army and on riot-control vehicles and on new Mercedes-Benz. If some of that money were spent on the health system and our salaries, then we could stay here.”
Harare paediatrician Greg Powell, chairperson of the Child Protection Society, complains the brain drain includes social workers. ”Britain is actively recruiting our social workers to the point where our department of social welfare is about to collapse,” said Powell.
”This means our treatment of Aids orphans is breaking down. We are seeing professional recruitment of our social workers by British agencies. They are offered salaries 20 times greater than what they get here. The result is we have 20 children ready to go to foster homes and it is delayed because there are no social workers to do the reports. British recruiters are directly responsible for that. They are pillaging our human resources.” – Guardian Unlimited Â