Health Workers

A Conversation with a Nigerian Nurse and Administrator Who Uses iHRIS

This is an excerpt of a post that originally appeared on the iHRIS Blog.

Oluchukwu Ifele is a nurse by training, with a focus on nursing and midwifery. She’s now part of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, where she supervises the clerical staff who use the open source iHRIS software to track licensure information for Nigerian-trained nurses and midwives. I recently interviewed her to find out more about her work and how she benefits from using iHRIS. Read more »

New Software Application Tracks Health Workforce Training

This post was originally published on VITAL, the blog of IntraHealth International.

The globaAmanda Puckettl agenda is clear: universal health coverage. And as we heard at the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, a strong, qualified health workforce is essential to achieving this goal.

But how do we create a strong global health workforce that can provide care to all seven billion of us? One of the keys is information—reliable, accurate information on health workers’ skills and qualifications.

Data on individual health workers’ training can be hard to come by. The information is often scattered in paper files, buried in obscure databases, or simply does not exist. To help address this challenge, IntraHealth’s iHRIS team in Uganda customized the open source iHRIS software to create iHRIS Train, a whole new application that captures and reports health worker training data. Read more »

A Student’s View: Task Shifting Holds Potential for Addressing Health Worker Shortages and Expanding Access to Health Care

Obinna OkekeThe concept of task shifting is not a new one. In 19th century France, officiers de santé were an officially recognized and commonly-used class of non-physician health workers, while in China, so-called barefoot doctors were widely deployed across the country in the mid-20th century. And in Africa, non-physician clinicians have long been trained across the continent to fill various roles. Succinctly put, task shifting is a process of delegating tasks from higher-level health workers to less specialized health workers with shorter training and fewer qualifications. Read more »

Empowering Health Workers to Improve Service Delivery in Uganda

This post was originally published on USAID’s IMPACT blog.

Agnes Masagwayi has a fierce determination to give her community the best possible care. But as a clinical health officer in Mbale District, Uganda, she knows how difficult it can be. Read more »

In-Service Training Improvement Framework Launched at the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health

There are more health worker in-service training programs than ever before, with training often representing the lion’s share of investments for strengthening human resources for health (HRH). But an increasing number of reports indicate that such training is rarely evaluated, frequently duplicative, and may not be designed to meet needs. A growing multiplicity of poorly-coordinated training providers may overwhelm and weaken training systems rather than strengthen them. Read more »

At the Source of Health Care, Health Workers

This post was originally published on VITAL, the blog of IntraHealth International.

Malik JafferMalik Jaffer is the deputy director of human resources for health and health systems strengthening for the IntraHealth International-led CapacityPlus project. I recently interviewed him about health worker heroes and what it’ll take to make more of them.

You’ve met a lot of amazing health workers over the past 20 years. Any who really inspired you?
Absolutely. For example, there’s a team of health workers in Soweto, South Africa, that work in a hospice. When I visited, the facility was full of men and women and a lot of children. I remember one baby that was suffering from AIDS. She looked about three months old and weighed only 10 or 12 pounds. She was tiny. But I came to find out she was a year old. Read more »

Taking the E out of PEPFAR: Commemorating World AIDS Day 2013

Amanda PuckettPEPFAR. To me, these six letters symbolize one of the most significant global health commitments in history. The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is the largest response by one country to a single health epidemic. Over the past eight years at IntraHealth International, I have supported a range of PEPFAR-funded country programs that have led to improving the lives of millions. And I have observed the United States’ cornerstone HIV/AIDS global development program transform from an emergency response to one that encompasses proven prevention and treatment programs, harnesses technology and innovation, and supports ownership at the country level. So as we commemorate World AIDS Day, I want to reflect on the progress we’ve made and contemplate that “E” in PEPFAR. Read more »

Let’s Talk Tactics

This post was originally published on VITAL, the blog of IntraHealth International.

Ok PannenborgEver since the first two global gatherings in Kampala in 2008 and Bangkok in 2011, human resources for health—or HRH, as this field has come to be known—has matured into one of the world’s biggest development bastions still to be conquered.

I had the good fortune to attend the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in sunny Recife, Brazil, last week and moderate a couple of sessions and events. Whenever I join thousands of participants at such global conferences, I look back and wonder: Did I learn something? Was it worth the time and effort? And now what? Read more »

Connected Health Workers Key to Improved Health Care

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

Pape Gaye, president and CEO of IntraHealth International, writes from Recife, Brazil, to friends in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in a letter published in Addis Fortune. Take a look:

While Addis AbaPape Gayeba gears itself up for the third International Conference on Family Planning, I find myself on the other side of the world, nearly 8400 kilometers away, in Recife, Brazil.

As reproductive health policy-makers, advocates, and practitioners are gathering at the African Union in Ethiopia, some of us, who would like to clone ourselves to be there with you—and feel like we are there in spirit—are gathered in Brazil for the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health. Read more »

Addressing Gender Inequality in Uganda’s Health Workforce

Constance Newman, senior team lead for gender equality and health at IntraHealth International and for CapacityPlus, presents the following case from Uganda. It demonstrates how IntraHealth’s Uganda Capacity Program is assisting the Uganda Ministry of Health to apply gender research results to improve leadership, governance, and management of the health workforce.

Human resources management policies and practices that promote nonviolence, nondiscrimination, equal opportunity, and gender equality at work result in positive professional work environments and more efficient recruitment, deployment, and retention of human resources for health. However, the gender dimensions of Uganda’s health workforce were largely unexplored. Because of this, the Uganda Capacity Program provided technical support to a Ministry of Health Gender Discrimination and Inequality Analysis (GDIA) to inform gender mainstreaming in the public health sector of Uganda, and in particular, to promote gender equality in workforce policy, planning, development, and human resources management. This supported Uganda’s Gender Policy mandate of “promoting and carrying out gender-oriented research in order to identify gender inequalities1.”  Read more »

Syndicate content