In Tanzania, CapacityPlus collaborates with the Tanzania Human Resource Capacity Project to strengthen the understanding and use of the Tanzania Human Resources Information System (THRIS) through human resources management training of health facility leaders and other stakeholders. CapacityPlus works in several countries to strengthen human resources information systems and implement the iHRIS software. This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.
Se
eing success is believing in success. That sums up the response of the delegation IntraHealth/Tanzania sent earlier this year on a study tour to learn from colleagues in Namibia about their experiences implementing a large-scale human resources information system (HRIS). What an opportune moment it was to borrow experience from Namibia, where IntraHealth is also implementing an HRIS—and one that has made decisive progress!
In both Tanzania and Namibia, long distances between towns pose challenges on financial resources and time. Like many other countries, Tanzania and Namibia historically used manual filing systems to track health worker data and therefore faced difficulties understanding and aligning their health workforces with actual needs. Because data were difficult to access, aggregate, and analyze, plans did not reflect realities. Read more »
The world currently has a shortage of some 4 million health workers. This shortage is amplified by a complete mismatch between where health workers are stationed and where they are most needed. The healthier and wealthier a community is, the more health workers it has. The poorer and sicker a community, the fewer health workers it has. The situation is worsening as every year hundreds of thousands of health workers move from poor, rural, and underserved communities to wealthier, metropolitan communities with a surfeit of health workers. This occurs both within countries (a nurse moving from a rural area to the capital city) and between countries (a doctor moving from a developing country to a wealthy country). .jpg)
Global health workforce issues have only recently received focused attention in the field of international development. In 2006, the World Health Organization identified 57 countries that had a health workforce crisis, defined as having less than 2.3 doctors, nurses, and midwives per thousand population. That same year, while working on the 
