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Africa’s health worker shortage ‘more critical’ than previously thought
Monday, 2 March 2009The article, published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization (WHO), estimated the inflow and outflow of health workers in Africa to examine whether current levels of training are adequate to take into account population increases and worker attrition.
Using information from the WHO health workforce and training institutions surveys and the United Nations population estiamtes, researchers, led by Dr Kinfu, found that health worker shortages in 10 of the 12 countries examined are even more critical than previously estimated.
The paper claims that current pre-service training is insufficient to maintain the existing density of health workers once all causes of attrition are taken into account.
“Even if attrition were limited to involuntary factors such as premature death, the current workforce patterns means it would take 36 years for physicians and 29 years for nurses and midwives to reach WHO’s recent target of 2.28 professionals per 1000 population for the countries taken as a whole, “ said Dr Kinfu.
“Some countries would never reach these targets.”
Researchers say their findings call for an expansion of pre-service training, combined with other measures, to increase health worker inflow and reduce the rate of outflow
The health worker shortage in Africa: are enough physicians and nurses being trained?
Yohannes Kinfu, Mario R Dal Poz, Hugo Mercer & David B Evans
Published online :
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/3/en/index.html
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