2004-12-5
05 Dec 2004, 20:18 UTC
This is Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English Development
Report.
A new study says the world needs four million more health workers
to improve public health. Southern Africa alone needs an estimated
one million more health workers just to meet the Millennium
Development Goals. These United Nations goals aim to improve health
by two thousand fifteen.
The study is by a group of health and development organizations
called the Joint Learning Initiative. The Lancet in Britain
published the results.
The researchers estimate that more than one hundred million
people work in health care worldwide. But the study says only about
one-fourth of these people are trained as doctors, nurses or
midwives. The others are believed to be traditional, community or
other kinds of health workers.
The study examines the way skilled professionals are spread
throughout the world. For example, it says sub-Saharan Africa has
one-tenth as many nurses and doctors for its population as Europe
has. Italy has fifty times as many as Ethiopia has.
The study blames several things. First is the AIDS crisis. Health
workers face more work and the danger of infection. The study says
many no longer act as healers but as providers of care for the
dying.
Second is the so-called "brain drain" of skilled workers from
poor nations to countries that can pay them more. And third is a
lack of enough investment in health workers in many countries.
But the study says official development assistance is finally
increasing after ten years. Currently, about four thousand million
dollars a year in foreign aid for health is spent on human
resources, such as pay and training. The researchers say foreign aid
providers must work together to better organize their investments.
They say ten percent, or four hundred million dollars, should go
toward workforce development.
The study also suggests better use of resources such as
paraprofessionals. These are people trained to do much of the work
of doctors, including some operations. But they are not doctors, so
there is less chance they might leave for wealthier countries that
need doctors.
Lincoln Chen at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
helped write this call for action. What we do or fail to do today,
he says, will shape the direction of world health in the
twenty-first century.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill
Moss. This is Gwen Outen.