Human Resources Crisis in the Zambian Health System: A Call for Urgent Action

Over the past few years, the human resources situation in the Zambia public sector has reached a point of severe crisis and inability to provide basic health services, primarily due to three interrelated factors. First, the country is losing substantial numbers of health workers to countries that offer better conditions of service, or are changing professions to ones that offer more attractive opportunities. Second, Zambia’s medical and professional schools have a limited capacity to train additional staff. Third, the country is one of the epicenters of the catastrophic HIV/AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa. There are three main findings in this report: attrition rates for all health staff have increased dramatically compared to historical trends, looking only at national human resources figures may obscure important trends within the country and many facilities will soon start experiencing severe constraints in expanding their HIV/AIDS services. [from abstract]