Human Resources For Health Planning & Development Strategy Framework

Abstract

Zambia has about 1.2 physicians, nurses, and midwives per 1000 population while the minimum acceptable density threshold is 2.3 per 1000 population. The estimated shortage of doctors, nurses and midwives in Zambia is about 14,960. However, with the projected population growth the deficit more than doubles disproportionately to, 25,849 in 2020, and 46,549 in 2035, at the current rate of HRH production. Worryingly, the human resources for health crisis has persisted for over 20 years. The efforts before and leading up to the development and implementation of the 2013 – 2016 National Training Operational Plan (NTOP) and the National Human Resources for Health Strategic Plan (2011 – 2016) yielded certain achievements, however, the HRH numbers and skill-mix gap remained disturbingly enormous. The Ministry of Health (MoH) recognizes that the health workforce (human resources for health) are a critical component to achieving the health system objectives. Importantly, Zambia has embarked on an unwavering health systems strengthening agenda that has led to unprecedented investment in health infrastructure, among many other interventions, aimed at enhancing universal health coverage based on a primary health care approach. However, Zambia’s efforts to ensure adequate HRH appeared to be impeded by delicate HRH leadership and governance, inadequate institutional capacity for HR management to carry out HRHPD, ineffective HRH strategies, underinvestment and low levels in HRH production, weak regulator capacity to promote and assure educational and training quality, slow progress in educational reforms, skewed distribution of health workers, low implementation of existing plans, lack of incentives, uncoordinated partnerships, and weak policy dialogue. Furthermore, slow economic growth, causing inability to pay, threatened unemployment of HRH even if the outputs were to increase. Given the aforementioned, the MoH has embarked on efforts aimed at exploring effective ways of redressing the persistent and prevailing Human Resources for Health (HRH) crisis. The highest policy-makers of the Ministry and many of its development partners resolved that a comprehensive strategy framework (SF) was needed that would define the model of interventions, identify priority areas and guide on focal strategy areas. It was anticipated that the strategy framework would inform resulting strategies, operational plans and programmatic interventions. The main focus for the planned interventions is to accelerate HRH production and improve the quality of trained HRH. The primary target audiences of this SF are government leaders, health policy makers at all levels, cooperating partners, training institutions, civil society, as well as the stakeholders and partners who support our health systems strengthening efforts.