Thousands of health care professionals have left their homes in developing nations in search of higher paying jobs in wealthier countries, Reuters reports. According to WHO's World Health Report 2006, there is a shortage of more than four million health care workers in 57 developing countries. The report said one-quarter of physicians and one in 20 nurses trained in Africa currently work in 30 industrialized countries included in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Sub-Saharan Africa has 24% of the global disease burden but only 3% of the health care workforce worldwide and accounts for less than 1% of global health care spending, the report said. The Americas have 10% of the global disease burden, 37% of the health care workforce and account for more than half of global health care spending, the report found.
Human Resources
A new international Task Force was launched and met for the first time in March to tackle the global shortage of health workers. With a shortfall of 4.3 million health workers worldwide, including more than 1 million in Africa alone, there is an urgent need to increase the number of doctors, nurses, health managers and other health care workers needed to face immediate health crises. The new global Task Force is co-chaired by Bience Gawanas, the African Union Commissioner for Social Affairs, and includes African Ministers of Health from Uganda and Malawi, as well as senior health policy makers from across the globe, from the public and private sectors, and both developing and developed countries. Together these leaders in health and education will champion the need for significantly increased investment in the education and training of health workers in developing countries, and will build international commitment to practical action.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Office of the US Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) convened representatives from HIV Programmes and Human Resources for Health Departments from Ministries of Health, Professional Associations, Academic Institutions and representatives from workers associations in Geneva for a two day technical consultation about the need for a regulatory framework in support of Task Shifting. The meeting signaled the beginning of a new expert partnership for driving forward the Task Shifting Project in the context of the wider HIV/AIDS and health workforce plan “Treat, Train, Retain”.
The migration of doctors and nurses from Africa to developed countries has raised fears of an African medical brain drain. But empirical research on the causes and effects of the phenomenon has been hampered by a lack of systematic data on the extent of African health workers’ international movements. We use destination-country census data to estimate the number of African-born doctors and professional nurses working abroad in a developed country circa 2000, and compare this to the stocks of these workers in each country of origin. Approximately 65,000 African-born physicians and 70,000 African-born professional nurses were working overseas in a developed country in the year 2000. This represents about one fifth of African-born physicians in the world, and about one tenth of African-born professional nurses. The fraction of health professionals abroad varies enormously across African countries, from 1% to over 70% according to the occupation and country. These numbers are the first standardized, systematic, occupation-specific measure of skilled professionals working in developed countries and born in a large number of developing countries.
More than half of all healthcare workers in the developing world, including Africa, are unknowingly infected with latent tuberculosis, according to a report available on the open-access Science and Development Network website. The study, published in the online journal Medicine by the open-source Public Library of Science, highlights the risk of tuberculosis transmission from patients to healthcare workers - and onward into the general community.
Eextra money budgeted for the Health Department means better salaries for health workers -- particularly nurses, it said on Wednesday after Finance Minister Trevor Manuel's Budget speech. The additional R5,3-billion allocated for human resources was in response to the department's proposals, said spokesperson Sibani Mngadi.
Collaboration between traditional healers and biomedical practitioners is now being accepted by many African countries south of the Sahara because of the increasing problem of HIV/AIDS. The key problem, however, is how to initiate collaboration between two health systems which differ in theory of disease causation and management. This paper presents findings on experience learned by initiation of collaboration between traditional healers and the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Arusha and Dar-es-Salaam Municipalities, Tanzania where 132 and 60 traditional healers respectively were interviewed. Of these 110 traditional healers claimed to be treating HIV/AIDS. The objective of the study was to initiate sustainable collaboration with traditional healers in managing HIV/AIDS. Consultative meetings with leaders of traditional healers' associations and government officials were held, followed by surveys at respective traditional healers' "vilinge" (traditional clinics). The findings were analysed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.
Despite the expanding literature on how reforms may affect health workers and which reactions they may provoke, little research has been conducted on the mechanisms of effect through which health sector reforms either promote or discourage health worker performance. This paper seeks to trace these mechanisms and examines the contextual framework of reform objectives in Uganda and Bangladesh, and health workers' responses to the changes in their working environments by taking a 'realistic evaluation' approach.
In sub-Saharan Africa, health systems are fragile and staffing is grossly inadequate to meet rising health needs. Despite growing international attention, donors have been reluctant to undertake the significant investments required to address the human resources problem comprehensively, given social and political sensitivities, and concerns regarding sustainability of interventions and risks of rising donor dependency. In Malawi in 2004 the government launched a new health initiative to deliver an Essential Health Package, including a major scale-up of HIV and AIDS related services. Improving staffing levels is the single biggest challenge to implementing this approach. Registration (free of charge) with medscape is required to view the article.
This paper addresses an important practical challenge to staff management. In 2000 the United Nations committed themselves to the ambitious targets embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Only five years later, it was clear that poor countries were not on track to achieve them. It was also clear that achieving the three out of the eight MDGs that concern health would only be possible if the appropriate human resources (HR) were in place.