Botswana has the highest rate of HIV prevalence in the world and AIDS has now reached crisis proportions in the country. Among the initiatives implemented as a response to promote sexual behaviour change, is the Peer Education HIV/AIDS Prevention Program (PEHAPP) at the workplace. This paper assesses the impact and outcome of the PEHAPP. It concludes that the PEHAPP is having a measurable positive impact in the key areas of improving knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to risky sexual behaviour which, in turn, should reduce the incidence of transmission of HIV/AIDS and other STDs over the long-term.
Human Resources
Promoting Behaviour Change in Botswana: An Assessment of the Peer Education HIV/AIDS Prevention Program at the Workplace
BRAIN DRAIN HITS ZIMBABWE'S HEALTH SERVICE
Zimbabwe's brain drain has hit the medical profession particularly hard. More than 80% of doctors, nurses and therapists who graduated from the University of Zimbabwe medical school since independence in 1980 have gone to work abroad, primarily in Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, according to recent surveys.
HIV/AIDS AND WORKERS RIGHTS: UNDERSTANDING THE issues
This paper from Norwegian Church Aid states that established workers' rights are often not followed when facing an HIV positive employee and therefore need to be given a renewed focus. This report concludes that workers are seldom aware of their rights, and are therefore easy victims for unjust treatment from their employers. Workers' rights seldom regulate work in the informal sector. It is probably in this sector that we find the poorest of the poor, often at high risk of contracting HIV. And when infected, they have few or no possibilities of access to proper health care, and only very rarely access to any kind of social welfare.
Public health workforce: challenges and policy issues
Human Resources for Health 2003 1:4
This paper reviews the challenges facing the public health workforce in developing countries and the main policy issues that need to be addressed in order to strengthen the public health workforce. The public health workforce is diverse and includes all those whose prime responsibility is the provision of core public health activities, irrespective of their organisational base. Although the public health workforce is central to the performance of health systems, very little is known about the composition, training or performance of the workforce. The key policy question is: Should governments invest more in building and supporting the public health workforce and infrastructure to ensure the more effective functioning of health systems? Other questions concern: the nature of the public health workforce including its size, composition, skills, training needs, current functions and performance; the appropriate roles of the workforce; and how the workforce can be strengthened to support new approaches to priority health problems.
acute brain drain in zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is experiencing a debilitating flight of professional and skilled people escaping the country's economic crisis, a study funded by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has found. A large number of Zimbabweans had taken up South African citizenship and there were probably more Zimbabweans in South Africa than in the United Kingdom, the country with the highest official tally of expatriate Zimbabweans.
All in the mind? The emigration of South Africa’s young professionals
South Africa is suffering from a ‘brain drain’, or loss of its professionals – but how serious is the problem and what effect is it having on the homeland? This study attempts to assess the number of emigrants and the skills being lost, and asks whether the loss is permanent. Skills loss due to emigration has recently become a high-profile public policy issue in South Africa. A major, unresolved question is the actual scale of the problem and its impact. There has been growing suspicion that South Africa’s official emigration data, SSA, significantly underestimate the number of South Africans leaving the country to settle abroad. This report by the University of Cape Town attempts to assess the true extent of emigration by examining data from the recipient countries.
Assessing human resources for health: what can be learned from labour force surveys?
Human resources are an essential element of a health system's inputs, and yet there is a huge disparity among countries in how human resource policies and strategies are developed and implemented. The analysis of the impacts of services on population health and well-being attracts more interest than analysis of the situation of the workforce in this area. This article presents an international comparison of the health workforce in terms of skill mix, socio demographics and other labour force characteristics, in order to establish an evidence base for monitoring and evaluation of human resources for health.
Public health workforce: challenges and policy issues
Human Resources for Health 2003 1:4
This paper reviews the challenges facing the public health workforce in developing countries and the main policy issues that need to be addressed in order to strengthen the public health workforce. The public health workforce is diverse and includes all those whose prime responsibility is the provision of core public health activities, irrespective of their organizational base. Although the public health workforce is central to the performance of health systems, very little is known about the composition, training or performance of the workforce. The key policy question is: Should governments invest more in building and supporting the public health workforce and infrastructure to ensure the more effective functioning of health systems?
Monitoring and evaluation of human resources for health: an international perspective
Despite the undoubted importance of human resources to the functions of health systems, there is little consistency between countries in how human resource strategies are monitored and evaluated. This paper, published in the journal Human Resources for Health, presents an integrated approach for developing an evidence base on human resources for health (HRH) to support decision-making, drawing on a framework for health systems performance assessment. It concludes that evidence-based information is needed to better understand trends in HRH. Although a range of sources exist that can potentially be used for HRH assessment, the information that can be derived from many of these individual sources precludes refined analysis. A variety of data sources and analytical approaches, each with its own strengths and limitations, is required to reflect the complexity of HRH issues.
Shock SA figures on HIV/Aids in workplace
About 3% of the South African workforce - or about 500 000 people -could have full-blown Aids by 2010, Department of Labour guidelines on HIV/Aids have forecast, reports the Mail and Guardian newspaper. The projected rate of 2,9% in the terminal stage of the illness represents a three-fold increase since 2001, when it stood at 0,93%. Statistics South Africa estimates the current economically active population at 16,5-million, including a million in the informal sector.