Malawi

This Praxis Note provides an overview of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the Malawi health care system and on the organisational capacity of Mulanje Mission Hospital. It describes the experiences and lessons learnt from a capacity building program designed to address capacity deficits and erosion caused by HIV/AIDS attrition. Less emphasis was placed on external training courses and increasing attention given to short-course inputs and distance learning. [from introduction]

The migration of health professionals trained in Africa to developed nations has compromised health systems in the African region. The financial losses from the investment in training due to the migration from the developing nations are hardly known. Developing countries are losing significant amounts of money through lost investment of health care professionals who emigrate. There is need to quantify the amount of remittances that developing nations get in return from those who migrate. [from abstract]

The medical brain drain has been described as rich countries looting doctors and nurses from developing countries undermining their health systems and public health. However this brain-drain might also be seen as a success in the training and export of health professionals and the benefits this provides. This paper illustrates the arguments and possible policy options by focusing on the situation in one of the poorest countries in the world, Malawi. [author’s description]

This document was presented at the ECSA Workforce Observatory Meeting in Arusha and describes an initiative in Malawi to provide regularly updated HRH information through an HRIS system including the current problems with collecting data, the steps to create the initiative and the indicators they will need.

There is growing interest in the migration of doctors from Africa to developed nations. Little attention has been made in understanding the flow of doctors into African countries. The objective of this article is to describe the nationality, country of primary qualification as a doctor and specialties of doctors registered in Malawi in 2003. [from abstract]

This presentation was part of the Planning, Developing and Supporting the Health Workforce: Human Resources for Health Action Workshop. It briefly discusses the background and some issues for consideration about Malawi’s plan to retain and recruit health workers.


To view this presentation, you must have either Microsoft PowerPoint or download the free PowerPoint Viewer.

This report presents a review of issues in the regional policy context that are of relevance to the retention of human resources for the health sector (HRH) within the region, based on a rapid appraisal in selected countries and at regional level. This work specifically focussed on the actions needed to stem the flow of international migration by encouraging the retention of health staff within countries. A particular concern raised across countries is staff retention in the public and rural services that preferentially serve the poorest populations. Importantly, policy documents and national

The migration of health professionals from southern Africa to developed nations is negatively affecting the delivery of health care services in the source countries. Oftentimes however, it is the reasons for the out-migration that have been described in the literature. The work and domestic situations of those health professionals continuing to serve in their posts have not been adequately studied. The present study utilized a qualitative data collection and analysis method. This was achieved through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with health professionals and administrators to determine the challenges they face and the coping systems they resort to and the perceptions towards those coping methods. [author’s description]

Using the training needs projection methods in the Spectrum Policy Modeling System software module ProTrain, this report estimates the numbers of family planning/reproductive health service providers needed to reach total fertility rate and contraceptive prevalence goals for Malawi from 2001-2007. [adapted from publisher]

The Malawi Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) sought the assistance of JHPIEGO to implement a performance and quality improvement (PQI) initiative in infection prevention (IP), as one intervention in response to concerns of healthcare workers and potential healthcare workers regarding the existing risks of exposure to infection with major communicable diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, at the country’s hospitals and other health facilities.

WHO, World Bank, and other human resources for health experts globally have recognized the dearth of human resource data for the health sector in many developing countries. In the present assessment, JHPIEGO reviewed the availability of staff deployment and training data from routine information systems in Malawi to inform the Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) of deficiencies that would need to be addressed in order to better inform the development and ongoing monitoring of deployment and training policies and plans.
[publisher’s description]

The broad objective of this paper is to contribute to the retention of health workers in Malawi by providing an enhanced understanding of health workers’ coping strategies, together with the identification of possible strategies that could impact on their retention. [from author]

The study found that about half of the deliveries in Malawi are not assisted by a skilled attendant. It seems that there is a severe and long standing problem with retaining midwives. Therefore, close monitoring of the retention problem is advisable. The research found that the two main forms of losses are that the midwives die or they go abroad. Possible ways of mitigating the loss through emigration could be to continue efforts in enforcing codes of practice on international recruitment in recipient countries.

This document intends to provide a policy and strategic framework for management of health information, use of information in planning and management of health services and monitoring health sector performance. [from preface]

This study was carried out in order to determine factors that may facilitate the poor retention of registered nurses in the Malawian public health sector.

This study indicates that healthcare professionals are using mostly clinical handover meetings, seminars and workshops for their continued professional development (CPD). There is need to improve access to relevant professional journals. The regulatory or licensing boards for healthcare professionals in Malawi should seriously consider mandatory CPD credits for re-certification. [author’s description]

The overall objective of this paper is to provide some insights into the effects of the HIV epidemic on human capital in sub-Saharan Africa through a discussion of some of the factors that are operating. It is not intended as a compendium of data on the problem but aims instead to provide an analytical framework for understanding the policy and programming issues. There is an analysis of the impact on the public services in Malawi, a detailed presentation of the impact on education and health and a discussion of issues relating to the measurement of the impact on different productive sectors and the role of different social partners in adjusting to, and managing, the impact.

The challenge of tackling HIV/AIDS was taken up by African Heads of State at their summit in Abuja in 2001. This led to the Abuja Declaration, the primary goal of which is to reverse the accelerating rate of HIV infection, TB and other related infectious diseases.

This report is based on research carried out by ActionAid International in Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Zimbabwe and provides a comparative analysis of the achievements and challenges faced by these four African countries in relation to the Declaration. [Adapted from author]

The present report deals with health financing issues in Malawi and analyzes trends in health expenditures in the 1990s, along with the prospects for improving resource mobilization, allocation and use in the health sector of that country. This review highlights the need to further prioritize the activities under the Malawi National Health Plan so that the plan will be a basis for government policy and budgetary commitments and also an instrument to marshal and orchestrate donor support to the sector. [from foreword]

This paper discusses the implications for health personnel of the HIV epidemic, and health sector responses to it, in southern Africa, using Malawi as a case study. Published and grey literature has been consulted to assess the situation and its implications for equity. [author’s description]

What effect does the increased number of Malawians living with HIV/AIDS have on the public health sector? To address this question, the Commonwealth Regional Health Community Secretariat (CRHCS) and Malawian researchers from the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau for Africa, undertook an assessment to explore the effects of HIV/AIDS on the health workforce. [author’s description]