Human Resources

An appropriate and effective response to the HIV/AIDS crisis requires reconsideration of the collaboration between traditional and biomedical health providers (THPs and BHPs). The aim of this paper is to explore biomedical and traditional health practitioners experiences of and attitudes towards collaboration and to identify obstacles and potential opportunities for them to collaborate regarding care for patients with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV/AIDS.

Past attempts to estimate the cost of migration were limited to education costs only and did not include the lost returns from investment. The objectives of this study were: (i) to estimate the financial cost of emigration of Kenyan doctors to the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States of America (USA); (ii) to estimate the financial cost of emigration of nurses to seven OECD countries (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, UK, USA); and (iii)to describe other losses from brain drain. Developed countries continue to deprive Kenya of millions of dollars worth of investments embodied in her human resources for health. If the current trend of poaching of scarce human resources for health (and other professionals) from Kenya is not curtailed, the chances of achieving the Millennium Development Goals would remain bleak. Such continued plunder of investments embodied in human resources contributes to further underdevelopment of Kenya and to keeping a majority of her people in the vicious circle of ill-health and poverty. Therefore, both developed and developing countries need to urgently develop and implement strategies for addressing the health human resource crisis.

Malawi’s health service is struggling under the burden of HIV and AIDS and tuberculosis (TB). Its health workforce has only limited capacity to cope due to severe staff shortages, poor salaries and working conditions, high levels of HIV and AIDS-related deaths and chronic absenteeism due to illness among staff. Without a strong health workforce, community members may have an important role to play in providing HIV and TB care. Médecins Sans Frontières describes an example of community involvement in district level HIV and TB care. The study focuses on Thyolo district, a rural region of southern Malawi with 458,976 inhabitants, of which an estimated 41,000 are living with HIV. It covers a two-year period from January 2003 to December 2004.

The paper reports on a survey of recently arrived international nurses working in London, to assess their demographic profile, motivations, experiences and career plans. The Philippines, Nigeria and South Africa were the three most commonly reported countries of training (in total, more than 30 countries of training were reported). Sixty per cent of the nurses from sub-Saharan Africa and more than 40% from South Africa and India/Pakistan/Mauritius were aged 40 or older; the youngest age profile was reported by the Australia/New Zealand/USA nurses.