Uganda

What’s the Issue? Not Enough Health Workers in Susan’s Maternity Unit

When Susan Alio describes what she likes best about her job, a smile spreads across her face and her eyes light up. “When mothers come,” she says softly and swiftly, “and they have a normal birth, they go with their babies, healthy, without any complication, that one gives me joy.” She’s perfectly poised in her crisp white uniform and cap. 

Susan obviously loves her job as a midwife at Naguru Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, but it’s not easy. She feels the effects of the global shortage of health workers firsthand, on a daily basis. When she’s asked about her challenges, her big smile fades and her words slow down. “My biggest challenge is usually not enough staffs on the station, because you end up being stretched, and then when you’re stretched you’re not able to deliver at your best,” she explains. Read more »

US Investments in Foreign Aid Provide a Healthy Return

This post was originally published on USAID's IMPACT blog.

What if you could take a fraction of a penny and use it to help build a health system? Believe it. It takes only a fraction of a single penny per American taxpayer dollar to train a global health workforce—a workforce that will reach millions through treatment, prevention, and counseling services.

Just ask midwife Teddy Tiberimbwaku, who had the opportunity to meet Uganda’s vice president Thursday.

Last year, Uganda’s Ministry of Health, operating with only one doctor and 13 nurses to serve every 10,000 people, was told by the Ministry of Public Service that not only could it not create any new positions, but also any unfilled positions—some 42 percent of them—would be lost. Read more »

At the Click of a Button: Jane Ruth Aceng Shares Good News

Jane Ruth AcengJane Ruth Aceng sits in a black leather chair in her office at the Uganda Ministry of Health. Even though she’s soft-spoken, you can hear the authority in her voice. And, as a nearby camera flash clicks and lights the room, you can sense she’s an important person. “I’m the director general of health services,” she states. “That means I’m the technical head for health in the country.”

Jane describes how planning for the health workforce used to be a nightmare. Uganda previously used a paper-based system to store information on the country’s health workers. Now, using a national health workforce information system called HRHIS, she shares good news, “We have a system where by just a click of a button, you know who is available in the system, you know how many health workers we have in the country, you know their qualifications, you know where they are, and you know what they are doing.” Read more »

Learning from Each Other: Study Tour in Namibia Informs Tanzania’s Approach to Health Worker Data

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.

SeMkama Mwijarubieing 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 »

Picturing Our Work: Who’s There?

CapacityPlus’s Dykki Settle was excited to show me his photos from his latest trip to Uganda to support the launch of the country’s HRHIS.

As we breezed through his shots, Dykki picked out a few to linger on and tell me stories about. One stood out in my mind.

Read more »

Bringing Health Workforce Information to the Public in Uganda

In Uganda, CapacityPlus works in collaboration with the Uganda Capacity Program and key country-level colleagues to strengthen the health workforce. This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Ismail WadembereTo bring the benefits of access to health worker information to the Ugandan public, the Ministry of Health, working closely with IntraHealth, organized a launch event earlier this month for the national human resources for health information system (HRHIS) in Uganda. The event highlighted the different functionalities of the system and the role HRHIS plays in the health system in Uganda. The event also marked a commitment by the Ministry of Health to increase transparency and accountability within the health sector.

The HRHIS is already being used widely. The system is operational at the Ministry of Health headquarters; all four health professional councils (the Uganda Medical and Dental Practitioners Council, Uganda Nurses and Midwives Council, the Pharmacy Council, and the Allied Health Professionals’ Council); Mulago and Butabika national referral hospitals; the 13 regional referral hospitals; and 69 local government districts. Getting to this point represents not only a large amount of planning and development of the open source software-based system, based on IntraHealth’s iHRIS Qualify and iHRIS Manage software, but also intense training sessions with system managers and users. With all this information now available, the time had come to make the wider public aware of the system’s existence and the benefits it provides. Read more »

A Nurse in the House

Sue CollinsAs a documentary filmmaker exploring the issue of untreated pain and palliative care delivery globally, I discovered the extraordinary difference health workers make to patients facing end-of-life issues. The quality of care a patient receives at this critical time can have a profound impact on both patients and their families. When I learned that nurses in Uganda were able to prescribe oral morphine in the homes of patients, thereby relieving pain and returning quality of life to many who were too sick to travel, I had to find out more. 

“Many developing countries still have a real problem about the use, importation, and manufacture of morphine,” explained Eugene Murray, former CEO of the Irish Hospice Foundation. “The second thing is having appropriate ways to distribute it. In Uganda, they dilute powdered morphine into water which is colored with a dye to indicate the three different strengths and is distributed by nurses in a community using recycled water bottles. That may seem very crude but in terms of pain control that is absolutely transformational.” Read more »

Creating Partnerships in Support of Health Workers in Uganda

Charles MatsikoIn Uganda, CapacityPlus works in collaboration with the Uganda Capacity Program and key country-level colleagues to strengthen the health workforce. This is an excerpt from an original post on the IntraHealth International blog.

I could begin every blog talking about the many countries, like Uganda, that find it challenging to build and maintain the kind of health workforce needed to deliver high-quality health services, particularly when faced with inadequate funding for human resources for health. These challenges can lead to health worker dissatisfaction, attrition, and absenteeism and are exacerbated by not enough of the right skill sets among health workers or by poor geographic distribution of those skills. But what I want to focus on today is what countries are actually doing to respond to these challenges, employ more staff, improve the workplace, and create strong leadership and management in the health sector. Read more »

Computerized Shortlisting Saves Time and Money

Ugandan health workerCapacityPlus works with the Uganda Ministry of Health to enhance workforce performance support, including field testing the project’s global rapid discrete choice experiment (DCE) tool to address attraction and retention of health worker cadres in rural and remote areas and a retention costing tool, iHRIS Retain. This is an excerpt from an original post on the IntraHealth International blog.

In Uganda there is only one doctor and 13 nurses to care for every 10,000 Ugandans, far short of the 23 health workers the World Health Organization recommends. Currently, only 56% of approved health worker posts are filled with qualified workers. Read more »

Training Managers to Transform the Health System

This blog post is excerpted from an original post on the IntraHealth International blog.

Charles MatsikoWe often talk about how countries grapple with the challenge of building and maintaining a health workforce that can deliver high-quality health services. I wanted to share some recent successes from Uganda, and work being supported by the Uganda Capacity Program.

In an effort to staff the health sector with managers who possess the knowledge, skills, and professional attitudes required to assume leadership roles in Uganda’s public and private health systems, the Uganda Capacity Program, together with CapacityPlus, recently launched a collaborative training program with the Uganda Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Makerere University School of Public Health. Read more »

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