Maravi

Medical body proposes budget increase to lure staff

Medical body proposes budget increase to lure staff
By Masuzyo Chakwe
Tue 04 Sep. 2012, 19:11 CAT

THE Resident Doctors Association of Zambia (RDAZ) has proposed that the 2013 health budget should be increased from the current 9.3 per cent of the total national budget to 15 per cent. And the RDAZ says the creation of new districts would be a positive development if properly planned and in consultation with all key stakeholders.

Association president Whyson Munga said funding to the Ministry of Health in the 2013 National Budget ought to move to 15 per cent of the total national budget in accordance with the Abuja Declaration if significant differences in the health delivery have to be seen from next year onwards.

Dr Munga said the health system was still the same today with the same challenges of inadequate funding, inadequate and sometimes very erratic medical and surgical supplies.

He said this was coupled with demotivated staff and a critical shortage of frontline health workers such as medical doctors, clinical officers and nurses with the country operating with only 50 per cent of the required numbers.
Dr Munga said the training institutions for these critical workers had also continued to receive inadequate financial support for expansion, quality education and research.

He said it took long to train and produce health professionals, "perhaps the five year-term of a government could finish without seeing its own products".
Dr Munga said efforts of investing in such should be seen at the earliest possible time by any government that comes into power.

"There is however hope that in the next three to five years, the burden of human resource shortages will be reduced as Copperbelt Medical School and privately owned health training institutions such as Apex Medical School, Cavendish Medical School, start graduating additional frontline health professionals," he said.

On new districts, Dr Munga said the imminent mistake was that the declaration was entirely being made by the Republican President without consultation with important stakeholders, hence causing a would-be universally acceptable idea to be viewed as a political ploy.

He said the result of this political method of creating new districts was that no budgetary support was attached to the declaration but people had to run about to start operationalising these new districts using the already scarce monetary and human resources circulating in the unfortunate nearest old existing districts.

"One hopes that all the new districts to be formed in the near future will be planned for in terms of monetary allocations and human resource," he said.
However, Dr Munga said government would be able to decentralise development and bring service delivery closest to the people by way of trying to meet the minimum standards of services befitting a district status in all the newly created districts.

"In respect to health delivery, this can bring about construction of a new district hospital in each of the newly created districts. The accessibility of curative district hospital health services can be made easy to the majority of poor Zambians, especially in the countryside," he said.

Labels: HEALTHCARE, RDAZ, SALARIES

posted by MrK @ 3:31 PM