No More Foreign Medical Treatment Aid: VP Chiwenga 

Vice President Chiwenga, who is the Minister of Health and Child Care told the media that the state will no longer be assisting government officials to seek medical treatment outside Zimbawe.

This is a move aimed to balance medical balance as he also promised to improve service conditions for health workers.

We will not export our or make referrals to our patients. Those who have been going out it is you and me. Is it not it? Altogether but that export bill was too high and that is what we want to do away with.

Zimbabwe has a national medical bill that is high. It is, therefore, imperative that the country develops a method of containing the import bill through health care innovations for import substitution.

This entails inverting the import bill burden into export receipts either in part or most importantly in the whole. This will improve the funding of the national health care system.

We will have hospitals that will specialise in different treatment services across the country. We are restructuring from the village health worker right up to the top hospital.

VP Chiwenga went on to give insights on the restructureing processes hihlighing that it was a result oriented and has also came to completion.

Today, it is with great pleasure that I announce that the first phase of the restructuring of the Health and Child Care Ministry that I was tasked to undertake by President Emmerson Mnangagwa is now complete

The new structure will have nine divisions headed by chief directors including eight specialised departments. The total establishment of the Ministry of Health has not been changed

The new structure’s nine divisions have been set as biomedical engineering, biomedical science, biopharmaceutical engineering and production, general service inspectorate, logistics and assets management, personnel and external relations, human resource management, health professional councils and regulations, finance and corporate services, public health policy strategy and production and curative services.

He also took an opportunity to talk about the service conditions of health workers were he pointed out that, “We have now reviewed salaries and allowances as a way of government commitment to make the national health care system competitive.

He went on to stress that as a ministry they: “are convinced that salaries and conditions of service are bound to further improve and be more competitive in the short to medium term because of the import substitution measures that the new Ministry of Health and Child Care is now representing. Housing and vehicle loans will also form part of the improved conditions of service.”

The VP concluded by saying, “as we move forward and face the future with courage, the expectation of government is that the work ethics and work culture within the ministry undergo deep transformation. We expect grievances to be solved amicably through discussion without endangering patients’ lives.

“Never again shall patients’ lives be used as pawns in a game of chess”, he promised.