THE government is planning to employ 2 400 nurses after lifting a freeze on the recruitment of health workers to curb the rising maternal mortality rate, Health and Child Care minister David Parirenyatwa said yesterday.
Richard Muponde Senior Reporter
Zimbabwe’s health sector has failed to absorb graduating nurses since 2010 due to a freeze in the employment of civil servants.
Parirenyatwa told a Press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing Partners in Population and Development conference in Victoria Falls that the ministry was pushing that all unemployed nurses be absorbed by the system.
“Our new administration is seized with trying to decentralise so that we fight maternal and child mortality rates,” he said.
“We need to take on board all unemployed nurses so that we will deploy them to health centres countrywide to effectively deal with the issue of reproductive health.
“New figures show that 565 mothers per 100 000 in labour die, which is unacceptable.
“Earlier the maternal mortality rate was mainly caused by HIV and Aids, but the situation is now different as mothers are being put on anti-retroviral therapy.
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“We want to establish the real cause of this high rate”.
About 2 000 nurses are currently jobless and cannot seek employment outside the country as they were bonded by the government.
In February last year, the government partially lifted the ban, but only absorbed 1 000 nurses.
Officially opening the conference yesterday, Parirenyatwa said Zimbabwe had reaffirmed its commitment to the principal goal of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) to ensure universal access to reproductive health services by 2015.
“This was mutually reinforced in the Maputo plan of action which is premised on sexual and reproductive health in its full context as defined at ICPD in 1994,” he said.
“The Maputo plan of action identifies co-operation as a strategy to attain both the goals of the ICPD and Millennium Development Goals.”
The conference will end today with the review and approval of the annual work plan for 2014.
