The Lancet’s lead Editorial in this week’s Human Resources for Health Special Issue focuses on the crisis faced by sub-Saharan Africa, and says that “richer countries can no longer be allowed to exploit and plunder the future of resource poor nations.”
The Special Issue coincides with the first-ever Global Forum on Human Resources fore Health convened by the Global Health Workforce Alliance (GHWA), in Kampala, Uganda. The Editorial says: “This Forum will launch the Global Action Plan for Human Resources for Health, which will guide action over the coming decade and serve as a much needed tool to measure progress and monitor accountability. This action plan is an opportunity to make a real and lasting impact on the human resources crisis. There is a great deal at stake. Africa carries 25% of the world’s disease burden yet has only 3% of the world’s health workers and 1% of the world’s economic resources.”
The Editorial looks the complexity of this huge challenge - workers being attracted both to the private sector within their own countries and to high-income countries around the world; and inadequate salaries, training, equipment and medicines. It says: “The scale and complexity of this crisis demands both top-down and bottom-up approaches. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.” But it adds: “There is cause for cautious optimism. GWHA’s Task Force for Scaling up Education and Training for Health Workers and its Health Financing Task Force are currently testing several local solutions. Task shifting – delegation of tasks to lower cadres of health workers- is also being touted as a possible way forward, and public-private partnerships, such as the skilled birth-attendance scheme in Gujarat, India, are having some success. But there remains a pressing need to consider other options.”
The Editorial highlights that while more evidence is vital to guide policy makers, “The human resources crisis is a highly political topic and possible solutions that do not have full political support are doomed to failure.”
It concludes: “The Kampala delegates need to be ambitious. If there is any hope of strengthening the workforce capacity in poor countries every possible local and international solution should be seriously considered, no matter how aspirational. Demanding that rich countries stop actively recruiting from poorer nations remains a viable option. The human resources crisis may be undoubtedly complex but this still does not obscure right from wrong. Richer countries can no longer be allowed to exploit and plunder the future of resource poor nations.”
PDF OF EDITORIAL: http://multimedia.thelancet.com/pdf/press/Editorial.pdf
Journal
The Lancet