HRH Global Resource Center October Newsletter

News

10 Resources Added This Month

Better Service for the Client and the Community: Strengthening HIV Training in Belize
Leaders of the University of Belize’s Faculty of Nursing and Allied Health realized their country has the third highest HIV prevalence in the region, after Haiti and Guyana, yet it lacked an effective system for training providers in counseling and testing. They established a national training center that would provide the latest resources and trainings for both students and providers. [from author]

Mid-Level Health Workers: the State of the Evidence on Programmes, Activities, Costs and Impact on Health Outcomes
This review aims to support efforts to integrate, plan and manage mid-level health workers by collating what we know about experiences with mid-level cadres in low-income countries in Africa, south-east Asia and the Pacific, regions that heavily rely on them. The review focuses specifically on the role of mid-level workers as independent practitioners in areas that suffer from severe shortages of professionals. [adapted from executive summary]

Fewer Doctors and More Community Involvement to Scale Up Antiretroviral Treatment
The researchers conclude that given the HRH crisis, ART delivery models requiring much less doctor time need to be developed. Overall, there is a need to shift tasks from medical doctors to nurses and from nurses to community health workers. In particular, the patients themselves need to play an important role in the delivery of ART. The outcomes of the various scenarios are predicted. [from author]

Sudanese Physicians' Reintegration Program
This article describes the achievements of 11 Sudanese-Canadian physicians who completed medical training and returned to Southern Sudan to practice. Few internationally educated physicians are prepared to return to a homeland as challenging as Southern Sudan; this goes against the globally entrenched flow of physicians migrating from developing to developed countries. [from introduction]

Extension Workers Drive Ethiopia's Primary Health Care
Thousands of community workers are helping Ethiopia to deliver primary health-care services to people living in rural areas. However, critics say that the training these workers receive is not adequate for them to attend many of the health problems they encounter. [from introduction]

Incentives for Retaining and Motivating Health Workers in Pacific and Asian Countries
The objectives of this paper are to highlight the situation of health workers in Pacific and Asian countries to gain a better understanding of the contributing factors to health worker motivation, dissatisfaction and migration; examine the regional and global evidence on initiatives to retain a competent and motivated health workforce, especially in rural and remote areas; and suggest ways to address the shortages of health workers in Pacific and Asian countries by using incentives. [from abstract]

Training of Front-Line Health Workers for Tuberculosis Control: Lessons from Nigeria and Kyrgyzstan
This article compares the quality, quantity and distribution of tuberculosis physicians, laboratory staff, community health workers and nurses in Nigeria and Kyrgyzstan, and highlights implications for (re)training tuberculosis workers in developing countries. [from abstract]

Task Shifting: Successes from Mozambique and Rwanda
Non-physician clinicians and nurses can take over many of the tasks in providing HIV care and treatment (including ART) in some resource-limited settings and shifting tasks to them can free up doctors' time, and reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS programs on the health system as a whole. [adapted from author]

Human Resources for Maternal Health: Multi-Purpose or Specialists?
In this paper we review the current situation of human resources for maternal health as well as the problems that they face. We propose seven key areas of work that must be addressed when planning for scaling up human resources for maternal health in light of MDG5, and finally we indicate some advances recently made in selected countries and the lessons learned from these experiences. [from abstract]

Susan's Story: Keeping Secrets and Promoting Family Planning in Rural Kenya
This Voices discusses the experiences of nurse hired through the Emergency Hiring Plan in Kenya in providing family planning services, and the importance of confidentiality in the successful provision of these services.

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The HRH Global Resource Center is a knowledge management service of the Capacity Project, a partnership led by IntraHealth International. This e-newsletter is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the responsibility of the Capacity Project and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.