Addressing the Global Health Workforce Crisis

In Uganda, we have been preparing for the Global Health Workforce Alliance Forum for many months. Because the forum is here in Kampala, it has provided health professionals and civil society organizations the opportunity to reflect on the situation here in Uganda. Like many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda is experiencing a health workforce crisis. In a country of 27 million people, there are only about 2200 doctors and 19,000 nurses and midwives. That’s about 3 times fewer than the minimum number of doctors, nurses, and midwives recommended by the World Health Organization. A large proportion of the doctors, nurses, and midwives are located in Kampala, leaving the rural areas of the country with even fewer health professionals to serve the majority of the population.

At the Action Group for Health, Human Rights, and HIV/AIDS (AGHA), we have convened a group of health professional associations, trade associations, health rights organizations, and health service organizations to develop an advocacy strategy for addressing the health workforce crisis in Uganda. Called the Health Workforce Advocacy Forum—Uganda (HWAF), this coalition has been meeting for the last few months to identify issues and agree on solutions. The goal of HWAF is to advocate for investments, concrete policy changes and improved implementation of existing policies that will lead to enhanced training, recruitment, and retention of health workers in Uganda.

To reach this goal, HWAF is first focusing on three objectives that we believe will help increase both the numbers of health workers and the quality of health services provided in Uganda:

• Ensuring that all approved posts are filled with trained health workers by the end of 2009.
• Improving infection prevention and control mechanisms in clinics and hospitals country-wide.
• Implementing a national policy mandating effective and high quality community-based education as a part of all health professional pre-service training programs.

The HWAF members will all be at the forum—listening, learning, exchanging ideas, and sharing our agenda with others. We are excited to be a part of this important event, and we look forward to sharing more of our experiences on this blog over the coming week.

Emily Bancroft is a Leland Policy Fellow in the Health Action AIDS Africa Program.

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Next week, a team of Physicians for Human Rights staff members, including Frank Donaghue, Pat Daoust, Sarah Kalloch, Eric Friedman and I, will travel to Uganda for the First Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in Kampala. We will also be joined by our colleagues in Uganda, including Emily Bancroft, Winnie Ngabiirwe, Pam Babirukamu Kamujuni, from the Action Group for Health, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS (AGHA). The Forum is being convened by the Global Health Workforce Alliance (a global partnership hosted by World Health Organization) and will bring together up to 1000 participants, including ministers of health, civic leaders, civil society members, health workers, academics and health professional leaders from around the world.

The Forum will provide an extraordinary opportunity for PHR to share and explore solutions with the global movement that is emerging to respond to the critical lack of human resources in health systems. In partnership with our colleagues, including Action Group for Health, Human Rights and HIV/AIDS (AGHA), we will run two workshops on human rights and advocacy training and also attend strategy meetings for the Health Workforce Advocacy Initiative (HWAI). As some of you may know, HWAI is the civil society-led network of the Global Health Workforce Alliance, which PHR currently chairs. HWAI advocates for the needed financing, a rights-based approach and other actions to enable countries to develop the health workforces they need to achieve universal access to essential health services.

As this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Kampala Forum can direct international attention towards a rights-based approach to the crisis in human resources for healthcare. As members of the global come together for the forum, the wider global community can unite to achieve global goals and to secure the highest available standard of health for all. Please stay close by as we bring you updates from the exciting developments in Kampala throughout the coming week.

Jirair Ratevosian, MPH, is the National Field Organizer for PHR’s Health Action AIDS Campaign. 

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