Vice President and Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr. Constantino Chiwenga during the Ministry’s conference in Victoria Falls explained how the National Health Strategy (2021-2025) dovetails with the country’s economic blueprint, the National Development Strategy 1 (2021-2025).

“The Ministry, in support of the National Development Strategy 1, developed a National Health Strategy (2021-2025).

“This strategy is built around the National Development Strategy 1-Health and Wellbeing thematic area, which has eleven outcomes, with each outcome having a number of strategic interventions guiding its implementation,” said VP Chiwenga.

Dr. Chiwenga noted that the NHS is anchored on four (4) key result areas namely Policy and Administration, Public Health, Curative Services and BioMedical Sciences and Technology

“There are four Key Result Areas in the National Health Strategy, as guided by the Government Programme Based Budgeting thrust, and these are:

Policy and Administration whose mandate is to provide policy guidance and direction in the attainment of a healthy nation by 2030, through increased domestic funding for health, improved human resources for health performance and governance; Public Health by strengthening preventive services and promoting healthy lifestyles, that is, scale-up coverage of public health interventions; Curative Services whose mandate is to strengthen the quality of primary and hospital care services, that is improved access to quality primary and hospital care and BioMedical Sciences and Technology whose thrust is to promote access to affordable, acceptable and effective quality equipment, medicines and sundries for improved service delivery,” said Dr. Chiwenga.

 VP Chiwenga explained that the NHS would be achieved by using a reviewed structure of the Ministry maximizing on efficiencies, transformative leadership and motivation of health workers.

“The National Health Strategy 2021-2025, in its implementation, will be fostering a strategic rebranding of the Public Health System. This will be achieved through several measures that include; implementation of a reviewed structure that maximizes efficiencies and equity, transformative and responsible leadership of the health sector and motivation of the health care workers, through competitive remuneration, adequate tools of the trade and non-monetary incentives,” said VP Chiwenga.

Dr. Chiwenga noted that the Ministry of Health and Child Care places client satisfaction at the centre of the health delivery system underpinned by nine divisions headed by Chief Directors.

“Thus, in order to ensure service availability and improved client satisfaction, the Ministry‘s new structure has nine divisions at the national level. Each division is headed by a Chief Director, who reports directly to the Secretary for Health and Child Care.

“The divisions are BioEngineering, Science and Pharmaceutical production; General Inspectorate for the Health Service; Health Regulations and Legal; Finance; Administration and Logistics; Public Health; Human Resources Management; Curative Services and Policy, Informatics, Monitoring and Evaluation,” said Dr Chiwenga.

In order for the Ministry of Health to deliver on the attainment of the National Development Strategy 1, VP Chiwenga said the Ministry has a vision of delivering the highest level of healthcare and improving quality of life for all citizens, in a transparent manner upholding good corporate governance.

“The Vision of the Ministry is to have the highest possible level of healthcare and quality of life for all citizens and permanent residents of Zimbabwe, by 2030.

“The goal is to improve the quality of life for our citizens. This will be achieved through hard work, dedication to duty, honesty, professionalism, transparency, upholding good corporate governance and ethics as well as zero tolerance to corruption,” concluded VP Chiwenga.

The 104-paged NHS document covers issues such as Health Sector Outcomes; Health Sector Priorities; Implementation Framework for the NHS and Monitoring and Evaluation. Issues of access to health services at various levels, increasing domestic funding for health services, availing of essential medicines and commodities and improved human resources performance in the health sector are dealt with in-depth.