Zimbabwe has been hit by a huge exodus of health professionals amid the Covid-19 pandemic, with more than 2,200 leaving to take jobs in the US, UK, Australia and neighbouring states, according to the government’s Health Service Board.
This is more than double the number of doctors, nurses and pharmacists who left last year, and three times the number that left in 2019.
Despite repeated government promises to improve wages they remain low. An average worker in the public sector takes homes less than $200 a month, while in the UK – which relaxed visa restrictions for health workers in 2020 – they can earn 10 times as much.
Officials say the exodus has affected an already fragile health system, which suffers from a lack of medical equipment and medicines.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a minimum of 23 doctors per 10,000 people, which Zimbabwe is far from meeting. When the last survey was done in 2015, there was an average of just 1.6 doctors per 10,000 people.
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Israel pledges 1m vaccines to Africa
Israel has also been busy on the vaccine front. It’s going to donate one million coronavirus vaccines to African countries, its foreign minister has said.
Yair Lapid said the AstraZeneca doses would be distributed in the coming weeks under the international Covax scheme, designed to boost vaccine supplies to poorer nations around the world.
“I’m happy that Israel can contribute and be a partner in eradicating this pandemic from the world,” Lapid tweeted
.
The foreign ministry said the vaccines would go to nearly a quarter of African countries, though it did not specify which.
Only about 7% of people in Africa have been vaccinated, the World Health Organization said last month – the lowest rate of any continent.
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Source: BBC
