Sub-Saharan Africa

This document details the specific hiring criteria for directors as established by the Health Services division of the Ghana Ministry of Health.

This document details the specific hiring criteria for clinical, nursing & midwifery and pharmacy staff as established by the Health Services division of the Ghana Ministry of Health.

This document details the specific hiring criteria for blood donor organizers as established by the Health Services division of the Ghana Ministry of Health.

Ethiopia’s poor health status is due primarily to communicable diseases, poor nutrition, and lack of access to health services in general and for most of the rural, nomadic pastoralist and fringe areas in particular. In response, the government has launched a Health Extension Program for which training of Health Extension Workers has been started. This study assesses the first year’s training program in terms of its inputs, processes and output. [from abstract]

Review of different documents on human resource for health in Ethiopia was undertaken. Generally there is shortage in number of different groups of professionals, maldistribution of professionals between regions, urban and rural setting, and governmental and non governmental/private organizations. A number of measures are being taken to alleviate these problems. The implications of these for human resource development by 2015 are explored briefly. [adapted from abstract]

Long-Acting Family Planning (LAFP) methods, provide uninterrupted protection to women for 3 to 12 years. But they must be inserted by trained providers in a safe clinical environment. With limited facilities and few providers, widespread implementation of LAFP in Ethiopia requires training of significant numbers of rural providers and developing properly equipped facilities for implant and IUCD insertions. This document describes a training program for family planning. [from author]

Non-state providers (NSP) of healthcare, whether philanthropic or commercial, exist outside the public sector. Research by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found evidence that NSPs provide the majority of primary contacts with the health system in all six countries, except possibly South Africa. [from author]

The purposes of this study were to quantify stigma among Rwandan healthcare providers toward patients with HIV/AIDS; to assess healthcare provider fears and perceived risks for HIV while providing services to patients with HIV/AIDS; to quantify practices in hospitals and health centers and among health providers that discriminate against HIV-positive patients; and to evaluate the relationship between provider stigma, provider fears, and perceived risks with discrimination against HIV-positive patients in health facilities and among healthcare providers. [from summary]

Contracts can be used to govern the relationship between the public and the private sectors where the private sector delivers services on behalf of the state. On occasion, this allows the state to offer services such as basic medical provision where public sector provision does not reach. Researchers examine the case of primary care in South Africa where such contracts are being utilised. [from author]

This study cuts across countries and quantifies the range of service provision types and mechanisms used by sub-Saharan companies that are diverse in terms of size, industry, and national origin. The study results systematically quantify which services are actually being offered, and how companies actually finance those services. The study also explores some motivators for offering workplace services and assesses why certain services and financing mechanisms are used predominantly by large companies. [from summary]

Through an analysis of focus group discussion data, we examine Kenyan traditional birth attendants’ accounts of the persistence of homebirths and the key challenges they present. [from abstract]

In health facilities across Kenya, many workers are struggling to do their jobs in less-than-ideal conditions. Work climate issues such as poor working environments, unfriendly colleagues, disorganized facility functions and ineffective supervision have been hindering workers’ performance and productivity and contributing to low retention. [from author]

This report concludes that assigning nurses to community locations where they provide basic curative and preventive care substantially reduces childhood mortality and accelerates progress towards attainment of the child survival MDG. The research in Navrongo demonstrates that affordable and sustainable means of combining nurse services with volunteer action can accelerate attainment of both the International Conference on Population and Development agenda and the MDGs. [from summary]

The purpose of this survey was to identify nurses' perceived challenges in implementing a community-based TB program in the Omaheke region of Namibia. The HIV pandemic has increased the number of TB patients and increased nurses' workloads, aggravating the burden of TB as a resurgent disease in this region. In order to implement a successful community-based TB program, the patient-related, access-related and knowledge-related challenges, perceived by the nurses, need to be addressed effectively. [from abstract]

A community health planning and service strategy was started in Ashanti region in 2001 with the intention of improving geographic access to comprehensive health care. The region used community-based surveillance as an entry point. The implementation process and health outcomes were tracked and evaluated after a year. [from summary]

This presentation details the issues of migration and retention in Swaziland.

Imbalances in quantity and quality of human resources for health (HRH) are increasingly recognized as perhaps the most critical impediment to achieving health outcome objectives in most African countries. However, reliable data on the HRH situation is not readily available. Some countries have hesitated to act in the absence of such data; other countries have not acted even when data are available while others have moved ahead in spite of the lack of reliable information. This paper addresses the issue of data use for HRH policy-making. [from summary]

It is well-recognised that medical students whose training exposure is largely limited to tertiary-level training hospitals may be inappropriately equipped to deal with the most relevant health issues affecting rural communities. This article evaluated the perceived educational value of a 2 week clinical rotation undertaken by senior undergraduate medical students at rural district hospitals and health care centers in the Western Cape Province, South Africa. [from abstract}

While evaluation is, in theory, a component of training programmes in health planning, training needs in this area remain significant. Improving health systems necessarily calls for having more professionals who are skilled in evaluation. This article describes a four-week course taken by two cohorts of health professionals from 11 francophone African countries. We discuss how the course came to be, its content, its teaching processes and the master’s programme results for students. [from abstract]

The overall human resource shortages and the distributional inequalities in the health workforce in many developing countries are well acknowledged. However, little has been done to measure the degree of inequality systematically. This paper describes and measures health worker distributional inequalities in Tanzania on a per capita basis; and it suggests and applies additional health care needs indicators in the measurement of distributional inequalities. [adapted from abstract]

This country study in Swaziland thus sought to map and assess incentives for retaining heath workers, particularly non-financial incentives. Specifically it sought to identify existing policies and measures for incentives for retention of health workers, their relevance to current factors driving exit and retention, and propose inputs for guidelines for introducing and managing incentives for health worker retention to maximize their positive impact. [from summary]

In sub-Saharan Africa, the private health sector ranges from traditional healers, pharmacies, and shopkeepers selling health care products, to nonprofit and for-profit clinics and hospitals. There are a variety of reasons people use the private health sector including convenience, perceived quality, confidentiality, or because nothing else is available. Moreover, private health care in sub-Saharan Africa is not just for the rich. Africans of all socioeconomic backgrounds turn to the private sector for their health care needs. [from author]

Interviews were conducted with staff of 4 hospitals thought to be functioning relatively well. The purpose of this study was to understand some of the factors contributing to the relative success of 4 South African distric hospitals, in order to share lessons learned with other institutions. A number of key factors were identified through this process, many of which relate to the performance, management and interactions of the health workers, which appear to be important in effective functioning of district hospitals. [adapted from summary]

This paper provides a review of the reported barriers that prevent doctors from managing HIV infected patients. The four most commonly reported barriers were: fear of contagion, fear of losing patients, unwillingness to care, and inadequate knowledge /training about treating HIV patients. [from abstract]

The International Council of Nurses expressed concerns regarding the aggressive international recruitment of nurses and maintained that internationally recruited nurses might be particularly at risk of exploitation or abuse. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe how recruitment agencies contributed to the emigration of South African nurses. [adapted from abstract]

The global shortage of nurses, creating opportunities for South African nurses to work in foreign countries, as well as a variety of factors related to nursing, health care and the general living conditions in South Africa influence nurses’ decisions to emigrate. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the factors that influence nurses’ decisions to emigrate. [from abstract]

This qualitative study was undertaken to explore and describe the experiences of professional nurses in their relationships with nurse managers. [from abstract]

This cross-sectional study assessed knowledge and utilization of the partograph, an effective tool for monitoring labour that can prevent prolonged or obstructed labour, among health care workers in southwestern Nigeria. [adapted from author]

Continuing education is necessary for all health care providers to remain up-to-date with the rapid technological advances and accumulation of new knowledge resulting from constant research. This booklet is intended to provide guidelines for planning, accrediting and implementing continuing professional development in Uganda. [adapted from foreword]

In response to the critical HRH shortages in Africa, DFID and Office of the US Global Aids Coordinator (OGAC) have been in discussion with a number of African countries to develop strategies and country level actions. The aim is to demonstrate the maximum flexibility of disease specific programmes to support broad based primary care in line with countries’ health plans.