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Kenya: Shortage of Health Staff Hits Region
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The Nation (Nairobi)
27 March 2008
Posted to the web 26 March 2008
Zephania Ubwani
Arusha
East African states are facing a severe human resource shortage in health, worsening the delivery of services.
The situation was aggravated by conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund in the early 1990s, which halted health staff recruitment.
The measures by the IMF also led to retrenchment and downsizing of the workforce in the public sector.
The second East African Health and Scientific Conference was told here on Wednesday that East African Community partner states lacked "effective strategies" to address the problem.
Dr Asha Kigoda, Tanzania's deputy minister for Health and Social Welfare, said donor dependency led to the stalling of research programmes in the medical sector.
She told the conference attended by more than 300 experts from the region and beyond that rural communities had been hard hit by constraints in the health sector.
"The rural communities are worst hit," she said, adding that poor infrastructure, coupled with poor remuneration of health professionals and lack of incentives, had made it "extremely difficult" to attract well-trained personnel to work in the rural areas.
The deputy minister noted in her opening address that HIV and Aids, malaria and tuberculosis were still a major concern to the region.
The EA region was also one of the areas worst affected by imbalance in the allocation of global funds for health research.
The Tanzanian deputy minister called on EAC to facilitate joint strategies in addressing common health problems in the region.
Available data indicate that demand for human resources in the health sector in Tanzania was 46,898 personnel in all the 27 sub-disciplines in the sector.
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The total workforce was 15,060, which ministry officials said accounted for only 32 per cent of the demand.
The shortage of doctors and allied professionals was put at 31,808. Since 2000 some 3,664 were employed by the ministry but the net loss exceeded their number, with 4,932 having left or retired since then.
At least 335 doctors and other medical specialists from Tanzania are working in southern Africa, US, Canada, UK and other European countries.
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