Nursing, medical students lured by Zambia and other countries

Aspiring nurses are being lured to Zambia and beyond by the promise of lucrative jobs and fewer bureaucratic hurdles. At a nursing school in Zambia, many of the students aren’t from Zambia at all. Michael is one of them. “We are,” he says, “over 100 Zimbabweans in a class of 140 students”, write Gamuchirai Masiyiwa and Prudence Phiri for Global Press Journal.

More and more Zimbabwean students like Michael are pursuing their medical and nursing educations abroad, motivated by better study opportunities, bureaucratic challenges in Zimbabwe, and the rising demand for international health workers in countries like the United Kingdom and United States. The exodus is likely to worsen Zimbabwe’s ongoing brain drain in the health sector, which has already seen significant workforce migration. According to a 2023 report from Harambee Africa International, a Rome-based nonprofit that supports African health care institutions, “in less than two years, starting in 2021, Zimbabwe has lost more than 4,000 doctors and nurses, and departures are on the rise”. The report also states that in 2021 and 2022, these departures were twice those in 2020 and three times those in 2019.

Zambian officials who spoke to Global Press Journal also worry that the influx of Zimbabwean students is compromising the quality of education in Zambia, as the growing student population strains medical schools’ resources.
Full report on the All Africa site