Health Workers

Nursing Education Partnership Initiative Tackles the Global Nursing Shortage

Sarah Dwyer — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:28:47 +0000

Around the world nurses are often the front line of the formal medical system, providing care to underserved areas and filling in where and when doctors are in short supply. Yet it has been estimated that sub-Saharan Africa needs 600,000 additional nurses just to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

The Nursing Education Partnership Initiative (NEPI)—the US Government’s unified program to address the underproduction of nursing professionals in developing countries—convened its partners for the first time in a meeting in June in Washington, DC. NEPI’s goal is to assist in the nursing component of the US Government’s commitment to training 140,000 additional health workers in developing countries by 2015.

NEPI is led by PEPFAR with government partners USAID and the Department of Health and Human Services. Other partners include CapacityPlus led by IntraHealth International, Columbia University, the World Health Organization, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative.

Author's name:

Kate Tulenko

Publication Date:

June 2010 (All day)

Six Reasons Ministries of Finance Should Invest in Health Workers

Carol Bales — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 13:12:22 +0000

Last week’s high-level talks about human resources for health in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, resulted in the Addis Ababa Call to Action on financing the health workforce, signed by the nine ministries of health that participated.

The call to action is a powerful tool that ministries of health, national health professional associations, and other health systems and health workforce champions can now use to advocate to their ministries of finance to invest more in health workers as the most direct way to meet their countries’ health goals.

Yet the fact that none of the ministries of finance that participated in the Addis health financing meetings earlier in the week participated in the later health workforce meeting highlights the challenge we face in simply getting the attention of ministries of finance, much less persuading them to act.

Author's name:

Misrak Makonnen and Kate Tulenko

Publication Date:

July 2015

New ILO Report: The World Needs More Rural Health Workers, A Lot More

Sarah Dwyer — Mon, 04 May 2015 18:29:49 +0000

On April 27, a new report released by the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) made a distressing finding: without adequate numbers of health workers, especially in rural areas, more than half of the world’s rural population—and more than three-quarters of the rural population in Africa—will go without access to effective health care in 2015.

The report, entitled Global Evidence on Inequities in Rural Health Protection, was the ILO’s response to observable trends in economic disinvestment and neglect in rural health systems around the world. Now, with this report indicating that nearly 56% of the world’s rural population—and 83% of Africa’s rural population—live without critical health care access, the ILO has provided powerful evidence to demonstrate why strengthening the rural health workforce is imperative to filling this gap.

Author's name:

Aanjalie Collure

Publication Date:

May 2015

Botswana Is Building a Strong Health System by Focusing on Health Workers

Sarah Dwyer — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 13:46:32 +0000

“I have a passion to help sick people,” says Oteng Gaopatwe, a nurse at Nyangabgwe Referral Hospital in Francistown, Botswana. “One thing I like most about my job is to see my clients satisfied, having a smile, and seeing all the people I have helped being relieved of their pain.”

Frontline health workers like Oteng are the backbone of health systems. In order to plan effectively for training, recruitment, and retention, countries need access to current, up-to-date information about their health workforce.

Author's name:

Alex Collins and Sarah Dwyer

Publication Date:

April 2015

What’s So Rosy about Garden City?

Sarah Dwyer — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 17:57:13 +0000

The walls. They’re the first thing you notice when you arrive at Garden City University College, a small school in Kumasi, Ghana. They’re painted a pale mauve. During the magic hour, when the sun’s low and red, the building and everyone in it glows.

The women who lead it. We’d come to document the school’s progress toward its goal of graduating more health workers, and we had hours of interviews lined up. Garden City’s leaders are stepping up to help address the country’s shortage of health workers. Ghana has fewer than half the minimum number of doctors, nurses, and midwives recommended by the World Health Organization to provide adequate access to health care.

So school leaders are using CapacityPlus tools to improve school management and identify cost-effective ways to educate more health workers. And we couldn’t help but notice that many of those leaders we met—from the new acting president to the dean of students—were powerful women who #MakeItHappen.

Author's name:

Carol Bales

Publication Date:

March 2015

Where Are the Health Workers?

Carol Bales — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 19:58:19 +0000

Professor Kayode Odusote (consultant for IntraHealth International, right) discusses health worker distribution with Mbemba Traore (director of the human resources unit at the Guinea Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene, left).

Author's name:

Carol Bales

Publication Date:

February 2015

The Room Was Full to Support and Protect Vulnerable Children in Nigeria

Sarah Dwyer — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 14:02:16 +0000

Nigeria SSW report slideshow

Jan 20, 2015 by Carol Bales

Click to view slideshow.

In December, the government of Nigeria launched a key report aimed at protecting orphans and vulnerable children in its Federal Capital Territory. IntraHealth’s USAID-funded CapacityPlus project contributed to the report and participated in the event.

The Child Protection System Strengthening Mapping and Assessment Report for Federal Capital Territory looks at the state’s child protection risks and gaps, and examines continuum of care, accountability mechanisms, and resource mobilization of the state’s existing child protection system. It ultimately aims to strengthen delivery of quality child protection services in the state.

According to the report, there are 17.5 million orphans and vulnerable children in Nigeria. It’s estimated that 39% of children ages 5-14 are engaged in child labor; approximately 40% of children do not attend primary school; and as many as 40% of children may have been trafficked.

Author's name:

Carol Bales

Publication Date:

January 2015

Invest in Health Workers to End AIDS

Sarah Dwyer — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 14:06:30 +0000

The recent focus on Ebola in West Africa has reminded us of the need for strong and resilient health systems. Behind every quality health system is an army of available and accessible health workers. However, in facilities and communities across the globe, health worker vacancies and weak support systems hamper achievement of health goals and threaten overall preparedness for future infectious diseases.

In most countries with a high HIV burden, health workforce shortages are commonplace and create significant barriers to combating the epidemic.

Much has been accomplished. USAID is incredibly proud of its significant contributions to PEPFAR’s (the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) achievements in strengthening the health workforce to deliver quality HIV services. On World AIDS Day, Secretary Kerry announced that PEPFAR has exceeded the target of 140,000 new health care workers, which was mandated by Congress in 2008. This is a great milestone not only for PEPFAR, but also for the broader global health workforce agenda.

Author's name:

Diana Frymus

Publication Date:

January 2015

2014’s Top Global Health Stories—and What They Have to Do with Health Workers

Sarah Dwyer — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 14:20:04 +0000

As 2014 comes to an end, the international development community stands on the cusp of major new progress, particularly in global health and development—but the war and disease that marked this year could hinder that progress for decades to come. Health workers labored on the front lines of some of 2014’s most prominent events, which will likely affect global health and the well-being for all 7 billion of us as we move into 2015 and beyond. So let's take a look back at some of 2014’s biggest global health and development stories. Some good, some bad, all illuminating as we enter the new year.

Author's name:

Margarite Nathe

Publication Date:

December 2014

Supporting Lifelong Learning among Nigerian Community Health Workers through a Targeted Assessment of Training Needs

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 18:07:08 +0000

Lifelong learning is the ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. It is not confined to the classroom but takes place throughout life and in a range of situations. To develop and maintain the competencies needed to deliver high-quality services, health workers must be lifelong learners. Formal continuing education and training activities can support lifelong learning. Yet to be effective, they must target identified gaps between each worker’s current knowledge and skills and what is actually needed on the job. Training needs assessments provide information to target learning activities toward identified competency gaps and learning needs of specific health workers.

In Nigeria, CapacityPlus collaborated with the Community Health Practitioners Registration Board of Nigeria (CHPRBN) and the Federal Ministry of Health to assess the training needs of community health workers in the South-South region. The assessment focused on globally accepted knowledge, skills, and attitudes for community health practitioners in nine competency domains:

Author's name:

Rebecca Bailey and Joseph Eton

Publication Date:

December 2014

“I’m a Health Worker”: Dr. Arturo Carrillo

Sarah Dwyer — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 21:03:00 +0000

Dr. Arturo Carrillo wants to end discrimination and stigmatization of people living with HIV in his home country of El Salvador.

“Very often people disrespect the basic human rights of this population,” he says.

He’s an HIV expert for the National STI/HIV/AIDS Program for the Ministry of Health. As part of his job, he educates people on key issues, including sexual diversity.

“Each and every one of us has to understand that while people may be different, under the law we are all equal,” Dr. Carrillo says. “And that is extremely important.”

Like other countries in Central America, El Salvador’s HIV epidemic is concentrated in specific groups—HIV prevalence among sex workers is 5.7%, among men who have sex with men it’s 10.8%, and among transgender women it’s 25.8%. But widespread unfamiliarity with HIV, stigma, limited access to health care, poverty, and migration all make the country and the region vulnerable to a growing HIV epidemic.

Author's name:

Carol Bales, Luis Cruz, Anne Fitzgerald, and Xochilt Perez

Publication Date:

November 2014

iHRIS Champions in Ghana Share Success with Using Health Workforce Data

Sarah Dwyer — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 17:46:28 +0000

Like many of his fellow Ghanaians, Obeng Asomaning wanted to use his skills to help his country. As a new graduate with a degree in health service planning and management, he landed a job at the Ministry of Health’s Regional Health Office in Ashanti Region. Quickly he saw that the office was struggling to access information about the health workforce. How many midwives worked in the regional hospital? How many vacancies were there in Kwabre District? How many health workers will likely retire next year? The paper-based information system yielded no quick answers.

Answers to these kinds of questions are important because the country has a critical shortage of health workers. There are only 13.6 health workers for every 10,000 people, well below the minimum recommended threshold of 22.8 health workers per 10,000 population. To improve the population’s health outcomes, Ghana needs to make the most of the health workforce it currently has while working to increase their numbers.

Author's name:

Gracey Vaughn

Publication Date:

November 2014

HR Management Policy Implementation at Presbyterian Church of East Africa Kikuyu Mission Hospital

Sarah Dwyer — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 13:01:33 +0000

In Kenya, faith-based organizations make a major contribution to health service delivery. The Christian Health Association of Kenya (CHAK) and the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops provide an estimated 30% of health care in the country through their more than 800 affiliated facilities. With assistance from the Capacity Project and subsequently from CapacityPlus, CHAK released a comprehensive HR management generic policy document in 2008. The document outlined organizational HR policies, procedures, and guidelines with the aim of strengthening human resources management (HRM) at affiliated facilities. The following post originally appeared in Hotline HRH, a publication of the Africa Christian Health Associations Platform.

Presbyterian Church of East Africa Kikuyu Hospital is one of the oldest hospitals in Kenya, having been founded in 1908 by Scottish missionaries led by Dr. Arthur. The aim of the missionaries was to educate the young boys and girls as health workers, among other objectives.

Growing only slowly over the early years from its beginnings as a small first-aid centre, the hospital received a major boost in 1975 from the late President Jomo Kenyatta, who seconded medical staff to the hospital from the Government. In the same year, the first ophthalmic work was done at the newly-founded Eye Unit.

Author's name:

Patrick Kyalo, Christian Health Association of Kenya

Publication Date:

October 2014

Emergency Care Comes into Focus in Ghana

Sarah Dwyer — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 13:24:50 +0000

Dr. Eno Biney is an emergency medicine specialist at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Kumasi, the second-largest city in Ghana. She’s part of a new cohort of health workers that are changing the way emergency care happens in the country.

See Dr. Eno Biney on the cover of Impact magazine. This issue is all about health workers.

“I chose to specialize in emergency medicine because I realized that it was one of the most lacking specialties in our country,” Eno says. “There wasn’t any form of organized emergency treatment of patients.”

Instead, Ghanaians injured in accidents or suffering from medical, surgical, or obstetric emergencies were rushed to feebly equipped emergency care centers that didn’t have specially trained health workers or triaging systems in place. During her medical training, Eno saw the resulting delays in diagnosis and treatment—and lost lives.

Author's name:

Carol Bales and Gracey Vaughn

Publication Date:

October 2014

Why Nigeria’s Response to Ebola Succeeded

Sarah Dwyer — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:12:56 +0000

A man arrived by plane in Lagos on July 20. He fell ill at the airport and was taken to a hospital. Shortly afterward he was diagnosed with Ebola, the first case in Nigeria.

Lagos is an enormous city of 22 million, and public-sector doctors were on strike. The number of lives at risk was terrifying.

“If Ebola hits Lagos, we're in real trouble,” warned Laurie Garrett in Foreign Policy, and added that her colleague John Campbell predicted it “would instantly transform this situation into a worldwide crisis.”

Yet August 29 marked the last reported case of Ebola in the country, and the number of confirmed cases topped out at 20, with eight deaths. The incubation period for those who had contact with Ebola patients ended on October 2. After 42 days with no new cases, Nigeria will be officially free of Ebola.

Author's name:

Sarah Dwyer

Publication Date:

October 2014