Speakers at a two-day international conference in Africa on midwifery have called for more incentives to attract young people into the midwifery profession. They said the midwives of today were fast ageing and that unless immediate measures were put in place to attract more young ones into the profession, the fight for the reduction in maternal and infant mortality and morbidity would be a mirage. The speakers made the call at a two-day international conference of midwives on the theme, "African Midwives: Uniting to address the reduction of maternal and infant mortality and morbidity".
Human Resources
Improve our conditions to attract the young - Midwives
Daily Graphic, 15 November 2007
High level consultative meeting on the Health Workforce: Scaling up education and training
Hon Dr ME Tshabalala-Msimang, Minister of Health of South Africa: AU Conference Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 16 November 2007
Dr Tshabala-Msimang said for Africa to scale up health work-force training, there is a need to mobilise adequate resources. She appealed to the developed world which has largely benefited from this exodus of health workers, to consider financially supporting Africa to train more health workers. Additional resources will also be required to rebuild the health infrastructure in some instances as well as training our lecturers, tutors and researchers.
Public-private options for expanding access to human resources for HIV/AIDS in Botswana
Dreesch N, Nyoni J, Mokopakgosi O, Seipone K, Kalilani JA, Kaluwa O and Musowe V: Human Resources for Health 5(25), 19 October 2007
In responding to the goal of rapidly increasing access to antiretroviral treatment (ART), the government of Botswana undertook a major review of its health systems options to increase access to human resources, one of the major bottlenecks preventing people from receiving treatment. In mid-2004, a team of government and World Health Organization (WHO) staff reviewed the situation and identified a number of public sector scale up options. The team also reviewed the capacity of private practitioners to participate in the provision of ART. Subsequently, the government created a mechanism to include private practitioners in rolling out ART. At the end of 2006, more than 4500 patients had been transferred to the private sector for routine follow up. It is estimated that the cooperation reduced the immediate need for recruiting up to 40 medically qualified staff into the public sector over the coming years, depending on the development of the national standard for the number and duration of patient visits to a doctor per year. Thus welcome relief was brought, while at the same time not exercising a pull factor on human resources for health in the sub-Saharan region.
Teachers' and Students' Perceptions of the Learning Environment in Clinical Departments at the School of Medicine, MuhimbilI University College of Health Sciences
Mkony C, Mbenbati N: Tanzania Medical Journal 22 (1): 9-11, 2007
The School of Medicine at Muhimbili is the main doctor-training institution in the country. It runs a five-year MD programme taking 200 students annually. As for many schools in low-income countries, the majority of teachers have no formal training in educational theory. The learning environment at the school has some strengths that should to be amplified, and numerous weaknesses that need to be corrected in order to make the environment more conducive to teaching and learning.
Africa staffs the West
Macfarlane D: Mail and Guardian, 28 October 2007
Africa is losing its brightest to the First World. Less than 10% of doctors trained in Zambia since its independence in 1964 are still in the country: the other 90% have migrated, mainly to Europe and the United States. No less staggeringly, there are more Sierra Leonean-trained doctors in Chicago alone than in the country itself. These medical examples are merely one facet of the massive loss of skills Africa as a whole continues to suffer. In effect, one-third of the continent’s university resources are serving the manpower needs of Western nations and not those of Africa itself. United Nations estimates suggest that Africa is spending a staggering $4-billion a year training professionals for developed countries. Why this is happening, and what African universities need to do to counter the problem, came under the spotlight in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, which hosted the Association of African Universities’ (AAU) two-yearly conference of rectors, vice-chancellors and university presidents.
Too Poor to Leave, Too Rich to Stay: Developmental and Global Health Correlates of Physician Migration to the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom
Arah OA, Ogbu UC, Okeke CE: American Journal of Public Health, 22 October 2007
This paper analyses the relationship between physician migration from developing source countries to more developed host countries (brain drain) and the developmental and global health profiles of source countries. Source countries with better human resources for health, more economic and developmental progress, and better health status appear to lose proportionately more physicians than the more disadvantaged countries. Higher physician migration density is associated with higher current physician and public health workforce densities and more medical schools. Policymakers should realize that physician migration is positively related to better health systems and development in source countries. In view of the "train, retain, and sustain" perspective of public health workforce policies, physician retention should become even more important to countries growing richer, whereas poorer countries must invest more in training policies.
Human resources for health: a gender analysis
George A: Women and Gender Equity Knowledge Network, 2007
This paper discusses gender issues manifested within health occupations and across them. It examines gender dynamics in medicine, nursing, community health workers and home carers and explores from a gender perspective issues concerning delegation, migration and violence, which cut across these categories of health workers. Gender plays a critical role in determining the structural location of women and men in the health labour force and their subjective experience of that location. The paper shows that woman are overrepresented in caring, informal, part-time, unskilled and unpaid work and within occupations there are significant gender differences in terms of employment security, promotion, remuneration.
Initial community perspectives on the Health Service Extension Programme in Welkait, Ethiopia
Human Resources for Health, 5: 21
The Health Service Extension Programme (HSEP) is an innovative approach to addressing the shortfall in health human resources in Ethiopia. It has developed a new cadre of Health Extension Workers (HEWs), who are charged with providing the health and hygiene promotion and some treatment services, which together constitute the bedrock of Ethiopia's community health system. This study seeks to explore the experience of the HSEP from the perspective of the community who received the service. A random sample of 60 female heads-of-household in a remote area of Tigray participated in a structured interview survey. While the introduction of HEWs has been a positive experience for women living at the study site, the frequency of visits, extent of effectively imparted health knowledge and affects of HEWs on other health providers needs to be further explored.
Migrant remittances
Eldis
This key issues page looks at some of these perceived impacts, and provides recommendations for further reading on the subject of migration and remittances.
Nurses will be paid more
IOL, 14 September 2007
Nurses in the public health sector would receive increases of between 20 percent and 88 percent on their starting salaries, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said. The increases, which would be retrospectively introduced from July this year, comes as part of the occupational specific dispensation which would see substantial improvements in the salaries of professionals in the health department and the rest of the civil service over the next few years.