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But Mr Catton, from the international organization of nurses, said this is not the current model. “Recruited nurses have no intention of returning, often the opposite: they want to establish themselves in another country and bring their families with them,” she said.
There is a paper surplus of nurses in Zambia – thousands of graduates from nursing schools are unemployed, despite a new government promising to hire 11,200 healthcare workers this year. But senior nurses like Lillian Mwape, the nursing director of the hospital where Mr. Mulumba works, are the most sought after by recruiters.
“People are constantly leaving,” said Mwape, whose inbox was flooded with emails from recruiters telling her how quickly she could get a visa to the United States.
The net effect, he said, is “we’re disabled.”
“The most talented nurses we have lost and you cannot replace them,” said Ms. Mwape. “We can now have four or five trained intensive care nurses in the ICU where there should be 20. The rest are general nurses and can’t handle the brunt of Covid.”
A general practitioner in Lusaka, Dr. Brian Sampa has recently started language testing, the first step towards immigrating to the UK. He is president of a doctors’ association and vividly aware of how valuable doctors are in Zambia. He said there are fewer than 2,000 doctors working in the public sector, on which the vast majority of the population is dependent, and 5,000 doctors across the country. There is one doctor for every 12,000 people; WHO recommends at least one in 1000 people.
20 Zambian doctors have died from Covid. Dr. He said Sampa’s last job was the only doctor in a county of 80,000 people, and he spent close to 24 hours at a time performing emergency surgeries in the operating room.
The pandemic has demoralized Zambia’s healthcare system. He recounted his days treating critically ill Covid patients when he searched an entire hospital to find the single C-clamp needed to operate oxygenation equipment. He earns a little less than $1000 a month.
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