Rabat – Morocco’s healthcare workers expressed dissatisfaction with their work conditions and compensation in the field, according to a recent report by the Moroccan Parliament.
The report entitled “Institutional values and their implementation: Moroccan changes and expectations,” detailed how workers in several sectors feel about their field’s institutional values and how conditions can be improved.
“Healthcare professionals and beneficiaries across most regions where the research was conducted agreed that institutional values in the field are heading in a negative direction overall,” the report said.
The negative perception among healthcare workers was contrasted with growing trust in the public health system among Moroccans, the report posits.
The sector still suffers from several systemic issues, the report highlights, including a lack of quality in human resources and equipment, which ends up affecting the staff’s ability to perform effectively.
“Sometimes, a single doctor may have 80 patients in a single day, which leads to the deterioration of services due to the inability to give each patient the time they deserve,” the report notes.
Such complaints are not new, as the sector has been long-calling for more funding and systemic solutions to increase the number of staff and add new specialties and facilities that public institutions currently lack.
The problem is exacerbated by what healthcare workers suggested was not a sufficient approach to dealing with many of the issues, as many said that most improvements recently seen in the sector were the result of individual initiatives, rather than systemic changes.
Simultaneously, the population’s trust in public healthcare seems to be improving, as citizens are starting to see the objective behind the private sector as mainly profit-driven, which leads them to demand unnecessary treatments and procedures.
If demand for public healthcare increases, the system may find itself unable to cope as it continues to suffer infrastructure and human resources shortcomings.
Morocco set its healthcare and social security budget for 2023 at MAD 28 billion ($2.7 billion), with the hope of implementing reforms to both sectors over the next few years.
The budget includes allocations to build new facilities in underserved cities and to increase salaries for workers to make jobs in the sector more attractive.
The lack of human resources in the sector is also largely driven by the country’s brain drain problem, which sees hundreds of Moroccans, especially in the healthcare sector leave the country every year.
In December, Morocco’s Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation Abdellatif Miraoui described the loss of workers as “immeasurable” for Morocco.
