PHA-Exch> Human Resource for Health Data

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Tammy Loverdos tloverdos at aed.org

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 often not readily available. Our new paper addresses
the issue of data use for HRH policy-making. It provides valuable
information to the body of literature available to policy-makers and their
development partners as they grapple with the development and implementation
of workable HRH policies. Data was collected in 2006 from key informants
(including the heads of Human Resource functions at the ministries of health
and their technical advisors) from a convenient sample of countries known to
have conducted HRH assessments in the last three years.

The paper finds that few countries have functioning HRH management
information systems that can routinely provide data without the need for
special studies. Countries seem to rely more on ad hoc studies to generate
data that should be routinely available from a functioning Human Resources
for Health Information System (HRHIS). Ministries of health are severely
constrained by the lack of skilled human resource managers. Many countries
also do not have, and still need assistance in developing, comprehensive HRH
policies and plans. Human resources for health advocates play a key role in
ensuring that available data is used for policy action and the involvement
of all key stakeholders improves the acceptability of proposed HRH policies.
The MOH must obtain broad stakeholder consensus from the outset in dealing
comprehensively with the HRH crisis. Due to the complex and multidimensional
nature of the HRH crisis, it requires a response that is embedded within
comprehensive strateg!
ic plans for health that address the development of the health system as a
whole. The HRH policies and plans would then fit into this plan and could be
more readily defended for resource allocations. Addressing the HRH needs
outside of this broader framework can be, at best, only a temporary
measure." The PDF is available online at:
http://africahealth2010.aed.org/PDF/Using_Human_Resource_for_Health_Data.pdf

Tammy Loverdos
Africa's Health in 2010
Academy for Educational Development
Washington, DC
http://www.africahealth2010.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20080708/5c89cccf/attachment-0001.html>