Health service priorities in a developing country: biomedical and health information support in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

The Ministry of Health has reallocated available resources to bring more primary health care services to rural areas and to upgrade provincial; general and district hospitals; and more recently; has begun to improve its library services. Two 1984 surveys of the information needs and resources of health professionals showed serious information deficiencies in the general and district hospitals outside the capital; while staff and students in the country's one medical school in Harare were relatively well supplied. In 1983; U.Z.M.L. was designated National Focal Point (NFP) for Health Sciences Information Services. In response to its new reponsibilities as NFP and to the findings of the surveys; and in support of the Ministry of Health's drive to improve health services to its largely rural population; the Medical Library sought to redress the imbalance by improving the supply of information to health workers outside the capital. Steps taken by the NFP and the Ministry to achieve this included the appointment of an Outreach Librarian; the provision of core collections of books and primary health care manuals to peripheral hospital; a training program for library clerks; the establishment of national core journal collection; and the circulation of a digest/update of locally-relevant MEDLINE citations and abstracts to health professionals country-wide. Efforts to provide computerised literature searches and databases; both from MEDLINE on CD-ROM and from locally-generated sources; are also described