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Managing a Health Workforce Crisis: Lessons from the Global Context

Maurice Middleberg

“Happy families are all alike,” goes the famous opener to Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But are countries with a critical shortage of health workers all alike, in terms of their health outcomes?

While in Nairobi for Kenya’s first national conference on human resources for health, I talked about how we tend to lump the so-called “health workforce crisis” countries together and assume that their health worker shortages correspond to similarly poor health outcomes.

As it turns out, some countries have managed their health workforce shortage more effectively than others. Read more »

The Life of Health Students and Professionals in Developing Countries: A Snapshot

Mesrak BelatchewThere are 57 countries that fail to meet the World Health Organization’s recommended minimum threshold of 2.3 health workers per 1,000 people. Everyone agrees on the fact that the health workforce crisis is beyond the numbers. The increased migration of health workers and the lack of trained health providers in rural and remote areas are manifestations of the inherent lack of capacity of the health and education systems in developing countries to adequately recruit, train, and support their health workers.

Typically, students that join health science institutions have strong records of academic achievement. Their personal aspirations coupled with the high expectations of their families, teachers, and their communities increase their desire to achieve more. They dream of getting more education and training to enable them to help others. Read more »

A Successful Initiative for Health Workforce Development in Ethiopia

Sarah DwyerMental health is not always on the forefront of people’s minds when they think about global health and the critical shortage of trained health workers. But the need is there.

In Ethiopia, Dr. Markos Tesfaye recalls a “huge mental health professional deficit.” He is head of the department of psychiatry in the College of Public Health and Medical Sciences at Jimma University. In 2007, he says, “there were only 28 psychiatrists in the country for a population of about 80 million.” Complicating matters, he recalls, “psychiatry nurses who had advanced diploma-level education were shifting to do their degree in general nursing because of lack of opportunities to advance their career in the field of mental health.” Read more »

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