Fourteen registered general nurses, six primary care nurses, twelve hospitals: Zimbabwe's health minister tells Parliament how forged O-Level certificates got trainees into nursing schools

Zimbabwe's nursing schools sit inside its central, provincial and mission hospitals and answer to the Ministry of Health and Child Care. Places are scarce, competition is fierce and entry rests on a ZIMSEC Ordinary Level certificate. In March 2026, after a run of court cases involving trainees with forged certificates, the minister gave Parliament the first national count of how many had got through.

According to ZimEye (8 March 2026), Health Minister Douglas Mombeshora told a question-and-answer session in the National Assembly that at least 20 nurses had been dismissed from government and mission training institutions over the previous five years for submitting forged O-Level certificates, after verification audits: 14 Registered General Nurse trainees and six Primary Care Nurse trainees. Mpilo Central Hospital and Chitungwiza Central Hospital accounted for three RGN cases each and Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals for two, with single cases at Morgenster, Gutu, Bonda, St Theresa and Muvonde mission hospitals and Victoria Chitepo Provincial Hospital. Among primary care trainees, Silveira Mission Hospital had three cases and Murambinda, Bonda and Sanyati mission hospitals one each. ZimEye's follow-up (9 March 2026) quoted the minister saying government would continue strengthening verification systems to protect the integrity of health training institutions.

The minister also described the checking process and its limits. At interview, ZimEye reported, shortlisted candidates bring original certificates for human resources officers to inspect, and Mombeshora conceded that HR officers may not be able to detect forged certificates. Only when successful candidates report for training are the certificates sent to ZIMSEC for verification, at a fee of US$7 per certificate paid by the candidate. Confirmed forgeries are referred to the police, with penalties left to the courts, and the nursing school then runs its own review through the ministry's assessment committee before dismissing the student. The parliamentary answer came five months after CITE (17 October 2025) reported that Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi had told senators the health ministry had tasked ZIMSEC to confirm whether applicants' papers were genuine before enrolment, following the Mpilo cases, where two student nurses had appeared in court in September 2025 and one had trained from 2022 to 2025 before being discovered.

The numbers expose the mechanism. Twenty confirmed cases across a dozen hospitals over five years points to a supply of forged results slips rather than a single forger, and a US$7 check that happens after enrolment rather than before shortlisting means that a trainee could spend years on the wards before anyone asked the examinations council a simple question. The minister's own admission that HR inspection may not detect a forgery is why, according to CITE, the ministry now says it vets applicants through ZIMSEC before they are accepted.

For a student in Zimbabwe or anyone applying to a health training programme elsewhere in the region, the lesson is that admissions built on a single paper certificate will eventually be audited against the issuing board, and that dismissal and prosecution follow. Pay the official verification fee yourself, keep the ZIMSEC confirmation with your documents, and treat anyone who offers to supply or improve a results slip as a fraud risk rather than a shortcut.