Policy Brief – Human Resources for Health (HRH)

Context
Human resources for health (HRH) challenges, including in Africa, have been recognized as a critical bottleneck to the scale-up and quality improvement of health services, including for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria services. The links between the availability and accessibility of HRH and subsequent service coverage and health outcomes are well established. In Africa challenges, includes shortages and inequitable distribution of HRH, high turnover, inadequate education and training, poor working conditions and lack of reliable health workforce data. Of the 47 countries in Africa, 36 have critical shortage of HRH, with only about 0.8 physicians, nurses and midwives per 1000 population while the minimum acceptable density threshold is 2.3 per 1000 population set by the WHO in 2014. Human resources is critical because it manage and make decisions about the use of all the other inputs to the health system hence as significant part of the efforts to achieve the universal health coverage(UHC) and health
related sustainable development goals(SDGs) and to build resilient and sustainable systems for health (RSSH).