A blog from the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health
By Hattie Begg, AMREF UK
The AMREF team has had an exhilarating first day at the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health (HRH). It was a day packed full of side-events all competing for the attention of hundreds of international delegates including health workers, technical experts, and journalists.
We split up to ensure that we attended as many of the different side-events as possible. Today was a big day for us; AMREF’s Peter Ngatia was opening the Health Workforce Advocacy Initiative’s important side-event, and we were also hosting three of our own events throughout the course of the day.
Lisa Meadowcroft, CEO of AMREF USA, said: “It is so exciting to be with so many people from around the world who are so committed to ensuring that there are adequate numbers of trained and motivated health workers! We know that a well-trained, motivated health workforce means the absolute difference between life and death for families around the world”.
Common themes of the day’s events:
- Reviewing progress and establishing a clear way forwards: The general consensus is that since the first HRH Forum in Kampala in 2008, progress on HRH development at a global level has been ‘weak and uncoordinated’. In particular, there is a strong appeal from civil society for a ‘global target’ (numbers and retention of health workers) on HRH.
- Information: The ‘information deficit’ on HRH, at both country and international levels, continues to hinder progress. There should be a strong focus on obtaining this information and ensuring there is the political commitment to do so.
- Tension – national vs. global: We heard criticism that international advocates and decision-makers are prone to talking ‘in the abstract’ about the ‘global crisis’ and ‘global targets’; national actors were rightly demanding more practical and tangible country-level action.
AMREF hosted three successful side-events and workshops:
The first was AMREF’s all-day eLearning workshop. During the course of this six-hour session, experienced staff from AMREF’s HQ delivered training on the delivery of eLearning to health workers in different locations. The workshop attracted participants from countries as diverse as Egypt, Taiwan, Tanzania, Southern Sudan and Kenya. Despite these countries having their own unique characteristics, it became increasingly clear to AMREF that the human resources for health challenges in these countries were remarkably similar, and that eLearning has significant potential as a tool to scale up numbers of trained health workers.
AMREF UK co-hosted an event with the UK Human Resources for Health Working Group, which was established in April 2010. The purpose of the session was to reflect on the efforts of the group over the past nine months. The session attracted over 50 participants from both North and South, including high-level European and UK decision-makers (e.g. UK Department of Health, 3 European MPs, ex-DFID staff, and one European Commission delegate). Excitingly, we obtained new recruits to the UK Working Group, including the UK Faculty for Public Health, as well as important and strategic advice for how best to move forwards.
In a side-event hosted by AMREF Italy and attended by European government representatives and HRH experts, AMREF’s Giulia Deponte presented findings from AMREF Italy’s recent report entitled: “Personale sanitario per tutti, e tutti per il personale sanitario” (“Health workers for all, and all for health workers”). In this session, Giulia posed the important question: can we, and should we, track the contribution made by northern countries to the health workforce crisis? The consensus from participants was a resounding ‘yes’.
For more information on AMREF's advocacy work, please click here.