Recommended readings
Medicines without Doctors: why the Global Fund must fund salaries of health workers to expand AIDS treatment
Crucial role of Global Fund support to the health workforce
Authors:
G. Ooms; W. Van Damme; M. Temmerman,
Publisher:
Public Library of Science Medicine , 2007
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was created to fight three of the world’s most devastating diseases. Recent internal comments from the Global Fund suggest an intention to focus more on these diseases, and to leave the strengthening of health systems and support for the health workforce to others. This article, in PLoS Med, examines the implications of this strategy, and suggests that it could create a ‘Medicines without Doctors’ situation in which the medicines to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria are available, but not the doctors or the nurses to prescribe those medicines adequately.
The paper uses examples of two countries – Mozambique and Malawi - to underline the crucial role of Global Fund support to the health workforce. The paper concludes that it is easier to remedy the shortage of medicines with external funding than it is to remedy the shortage of health workers: medicines can be bought, whereas health workers have to be trained first. This underlines the importance of starting emergency human resources programmes. The Global Fund is in a position to fund the salaries of health workers, but donors must give the Global Fund the resources to do so.
