Access to good-quality health services is crucial for the improvement of many health outcomes, such as those targeted by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the international community in 2000. The health-related MDGs cannot be achieved if vulnerable populations do not have access to skilled personnel and to other necessary inputs. This paper focuses on the geographical dimension of access and on one of its critical determinants: the availability of qualified personnel.
Human Resources
Not enough there, too many here: understanding geographical imbalances in the distribution of the health workforce
Human Resources for Health 4(12), 26 May 2006
Skilled migration: healthcare policy options
Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty, University of Sussex: Gent S, Skeldon, R
This policy brief examines the case for a two-tiered health training system. Within this system, doctors and nurses are trained to international standards, while many others are trained to more basic levels of health care, enabling them to meet the basic needs of the people in rural areas.
The ethics of cherry picking: The dilemma of where you live, work and play!!!
e-CIVICUS: 22 May 2006, Naidoo K
A recent conference entitled "Immigration Futures", organised by the Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements. One panel focused on outward migration which looks at the “brain drain” problem facing many predominantly poor countries since some of their most skilled citizens choose to live and work in predominantly rich countries. Manchester in England, UK for example, has more Malawian doctors than the entire Malawian health system!
US plan to lure nurses may hurt poor nations
The New York Times, 24 May 2006: Dugger CW
As the United States runs short of nurses, senators are looking abroad. A little-noticed provision in their immigration bill would throw open the gate to nurses and, some fear, drain them from the world's developing countries.
Focus on human resources for health in scaling up ART Delivery
Eldis Health Systems Reporter - HIV/AIDS Feature
With a shortage of health care workers and increasing demand to provide ART, existing ART delivery models may not be adequate and many have argued the need to rethink standard delivery models. Researchers and practitioners have argued that we should consider context-specific delivery models that rely much less on medical doctors in situations where they are in short supply. This feature discusess this matter in detail.
Health-care workers must be given a fairer deal
World Health Organisation
The World Health Organization (WHO) warns that failure to address problems confronting health workers may push some health systems to the brink of collapse. It describes the grave implications of neglecting health workers' rights in terms of remuneration and working conditions.
Medical brain drain puts Southern Africa in a quandary
Inter Press Service News Agency: Nduru M
The figures tell it all. In South Africa, 37 percent of the country's doctors and seven percent of its nurses have migrated to Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Portugal, Britain and the United States. These statistics, compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), reflect the magnitude of the health worker "brain drain" in Southern Africa.
Nurses leave, health care in Africa suffers
The Philadelphia Inquirer: Bengali S
The promise of higher salaries and better working conditions lures about 20,000 African nurses and other health-care workers annually to richer countries. The brain drain makes it even harder for African countries to treat diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which kill millions each year, experts say. But with the United States facing its own nursing shortage, some on Capitol Hill want to make it easier for foreign nurses to immigrate to America. The article describes policies that have facilitated this change.
Retaining health workers in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights
The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) statement on World Health Day recognized that realization of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health remains a daily struggle for all health workers in Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean health delivery sector is presently in a severe state with a massive exodus of qualified health workers, resulting from many factors, amongst them poor remuneration and lack of basic medical equipment necessary for health workers to satisfactorily carry out their work.
Further details: /newsletter/id/31476
SA's medical brain drain at crisis point
Cape Argus/IOL: Govender S
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang early in April began World Health Day celebrations with the launch of the new Human Resources (HR) Health Plan, which is meant to help combat the rapidly increasing migration of doctors. The section in the HR plan for health dealing with the migration of health personnel showed that 23 407 South African-born health professionals were now working in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States alone.