The US Government Should Consider These 7 Areas of Investment in the African Health Workforce

By Janet Muriuki, Senior director of health workforce development (interim) Nicodemas Ondies, medical lab officer, takes samples from a client at the Tudor Subcounty Hospital in Kenya. Photo by Edwin Joe for IntraHealth International.February 14, 2022There have been health workforce projects in Kenya since 2009, but US funding for these types of programs has been dwindling. In my experience as a physician and health workforce expert, some of these funding cuts have greatly affected how we support health workers both at the national and the subnational levels.Now that the Biden Administration is considering launching a new White House initiative for the global health workforce, they should make sure to focus on health systems, including the health workforce.Funding cuts have greatly affected how we support health workers.Here are seven areas of investment I hope the White House will focus their initiative on for stronger health system and better results.1. Medical education& pre-service trainingThese areas have been drastically cut and deemphasized. We need to establish more teaching hospitals and centers of excellence where health workers of all medical cadres are trained locally, at county and subcounty referral hospitals—not only in big cities.And I don’t mean just doctors, nurses, and midwives. During COVID-19, we’ve seen the need for multidisciplinary specialist cadres to treat critically ill patients in ICUs and biomedical engineers to help ma...
Source: IntraHealth International - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Policy & Advocacy Health Workers Source Type: news