• Other communicable diseases

Other communicable diseases

This chapter from the World Bank book, ‘Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries,’ explores how to build and motivate the health care workforce. Specifically, it examines HR (human resources) planning, training and professional development, incentives for workers to accept and stay in posts and to deliver services, and alternatives to conventional professional groups. It emphasises the importance of making health workers with the appropriate skills available and motivating them. The chapter finds that economic assistance alone will not provide adequate human resource levels, and that a range of strategies must be adopted, including better regulation, stronger incentives, and initiatives to make key skills available at lower cost.

The authors argue that much of the debate focuses on developments within traditional patterns of staffing of services. However, new patterns are increasingly emerging, and current research does not adequately address the HR the constraints facing health systems. The development of incentive systems should be combined with the development of organisational and institutional capacity that supports sustainable human resources development in general. The authors also provide a set of recommendations for national governments to help develop self-sustaining systems for the supply, use and retention of health workers. [adapted from author]

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