STAFF WRITER
Foreign medical doctors have approached government advocating for the scrapping of an induction exam conducted by the Medical and Dental Practitioners Council of Zimbabwe (MDCPZ) which students trained overseas have to go through before they are deemed legible to practice locally.
According to a document seen by the Business Times, there are currently an estimated 120 known medical graduates trained in Russia and Ukraine who have been denied registration for internship by the Registrar, MDCPZ since 2016.
“There are other medical students (- numbers not known but significant-) currently receiving medical training outside the country, who are now potentially exposed to the Registrar, MDCPZ as there are most likely to be denied internship in Zimbabwe,” read a document seen by this publication.
Some medical doctors are currently undertaking internship and some have completed and are working within the SADC region, UK and USA and other countries. They said the current doctor medical training capacity in Zimbabwe is inadequate, resulting in government sending students for medical training to South Africa, Russia and other countries.
At family level, parents have been complementing government efforts by paying for their children or relatives university fees.
After meeting Health and Child Welfare minister Obadiah Moyo, the medical practitioners also resolved that should the exam be maintained it should at least be a standardised exam which has core principles which include set guidelines and curriculum as the current structure was too simple hence the high pass rates.
