• Capacity

Capacity building and health worker training

This report, from the Touch Foundation, explores the human resources for health (HRH) challenge in developing countries. It uses Tanzania as a case study, as well as exploring the HRH situation elsewhere. The report finds that the health care crisis in Tanzania is acute and that there is a significant HRH shortage compared to neighbouring countries. The authors argue that higher skilled cadres of health workers should be the central priority for investment in the country. Ensuring that highly skilled health workers are distributed evenly will be important and that the shortage may take many years and sustained funding to overcome. HRH observations outside of Tanzania reveal that importing health workers on a large scale is not a cost-effective solution.

The authors conclude that the only effective means of addressing the HRH challenge in poor countries is to begin immediately scaling up medical training capacity. The authors argue that it will take approximately ten years to achieve effective increases. They therefore argue that the global public health community should make training a top priority. They also argue that issues such as productivity and retention need to be addressed in parallel with building up training. [adapted from author]

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