Ethiopian Review

Addis Ababa — Innovative approaches to human resource planning and quality service provision are required to avert the high rate of maternal death and disability in the Sub-Sahara region, a regional conference held here in Addis Ababa at the UNECA Conference Centre urges.

The conference; organized by the Ministry of Health (MoH), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program (AMDD), urged that support for the development and deployment of non-physician clinicians (NPCs), as seen in many countries throughout Africa, is one of the best approaches to be sought.

“Almost every country in Africa has a set of health professionals who are not doctors but who provide significant clinical care even in the most remote areas,” a report by UNFPA reads.

“In some countries they are known as clinical officers. Others call them assistant medical officers or health officers. In the context of lifesaving maternal health care, this group also includes midwives and nurse/midwives who provide emergency obstetric care (EOC).”

In most of Africa, there are fewer than five doctors for every 100,000 people, and each year 20,000 health professionals leave their posts to pursue jobs in urban areas or outside their own countries.

If countries in this region are to achieve Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5, NPCs have to increasingly take on specialised or higher-level clinical functions, performing critical procedures such as surgery, conventionally associated with faculty-trained and highly mobile doctors and specialists.

It was reiterated that despite the apparent broad use of NPCs in Africa, these health workers have until recently been virtually invisible in global discussions, regional policy documents and government strategic plans.

The conference, which had the theme Human Resources for Maternal Survival: Task-shifting to Non-Physician Clinicians, brought together countries with many years of proven experience deploying NPCs to expand access to EOC and countries that are either just beginning this process or have significant interest in utilising NPCs for EOC.

Tedros Adhanom (PhD), a minister at the Ministry of Health, said that balancing the supply and demand side of health workers is crucial in tackling the brain drain that is currently affecting many African countries.

“In the past three years, we have been able to increase the number of graduates from higher learning institutions from just 250 to 1, 300 per year,” he said at the closing day of the meeting. “Upon the completion of the dozens of universities under construction here in Ethiopia, that is expected to grow to 8,000 per year.”

The minister says training more and more health workers is of vital importance, citing Egypt as a case where more than 10,000 medical students graduate each year. However, he added that financial and non-financial incentives should also be provided to keep them in their jobs.

More than 350 representatives from 30 African countries and other development partners from around the globe participated in the four day meeting that was held from June 29 to July 2.

- By Elias Meseret | Capital Ethiopia