Africa's health leaders have taken a step to design a robust model for a central mechanism for the training and deploying of health workers on the continent.
"This is an agenda that enjoys a lot of support particularly from the heads of state," said Dr. Raji Tajudeen, the acting Deputy Director General of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the Head of Public Health Institutes and Research, officially opening the conference.
A decision was taken in 2022 by heads of states for Africa CDC to come up with a Health Workforce Task team, he said.
The Health Workforce Compact- an agreement between two or more parties is a set of standards or workstreams that countries can sign on to. It has been in the pipeline at Africa CDC since 2018. The plan is to develop policy frameworks that can be adopted in individual member countries.
African Union (AU) Member States representatives met from 10-15 July at Africa CDC, headquarters to shape the direction of the Workforce Compact. The goal was to align on health workforce priorities and formalize commitments.
The plan comes against the backdrop of the World Health Organisation Africa Region, saying that between 5.3 million and 6.1 million additional health workers will be required in Africa by 2030.
"If you look at Africa CDC Strategic Plan's six priorities and 7 enablers none of them is achievable without a robust health workforce," said Dr. Tajudeen.
When Africa CDC came on board one of the things we had to to add value and complement the global health space that had been occupied with some major players for over 74 years, he explained.
"We had to do things differently when the New Public Health Order came into place, and in this Order, we need to strengthen our public health institutions, and we cannot talk of strong institutions without health workforce. We also know that we need to expand manufacturing, that is also not possible without health workforce," Dr Tajudeen said.
Dr Sospeter Gatobu, a public health communication specialist from IDEAL Public Health and Development Consultancy (IPHDC) who opened the discussion said Africa CDC had already made the foundation, but the issue was to address Africa's share of high disease burden at 20% while, the continent only has 3% workforce.
"We are not even thinking about the number which are very important, the quality of the workforce is important too," Dr Gatobu said. He said the Workforce Compact would be aligned and stimulate investments in health worker education, employment retention, and mobility.
For the Workforce Compact to work there must be a lot of engagement and communication, no one is forced to sign on, explained Patrick Ngassa Piotie, Senior Project Manager, Diabetes Research Centre, University of Pretoria working as lead on the Compact.
During the discussion, the health specialists paid attention to countries with the largest information gaps based on the baseline review.
An emphasis was made on countries with concerning projections, such as those expected to see the highest increase in the need for health workers like Burundi, Mauritania, Namibia, and Nigeria and those projected to have the largest reductions in practicing health workers, particularly of nurses and midwives such as Kenya, Liberia, Seychelles, and South Africa by 2030.
The representatives took a dive into centralised training of cadres such as public health informaticians, development of a model for rural retention, raising funds for training of cadres such as community health workers, obtaining AU political will for health workforce and the structured approach to information systems harmonization that will be required.
Fifa Rahman, co-lead of policy at Matahari Global, guiding the discussions and data collection said the Compact will highlight different elements and gaps so that Africa CDC and AU will work to improve health workforce challenges.
"It will also work as an advocacy tool to convince out counterparts from different sectors to see health workforce as an investment," she said. Dr Tajudeen agreed with her sentiments saying a strategic approach is required to invest in that workforce, for the need mobilise domestic resources for this cause.
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The team working on the Health Workforce Compact said it will continue with regional consultations, development of legal instruments for the compact agreement, designing the key metrics that can be used to track progress and focus on the actual development of compact.
They will also soon share the roadmap for progress on the compact implementation and operationalization that will examine training needs assessment, developing training modules and determine training modalities.
Dr. Tiruneh Amsale, Technical Officer, Public Health Workforce Development at Africa CDC who is coordinating the project said the implementation of the Workforce Compact will not be done by Africa CDC when complete, a task force with all institutions will drive the work.
"The decision was given to us to develop the Health Workforce Compact, as we will implement it, we will go back to the heads of government," he said. "We can not drive this agenda alone we need partners," said Dr Dr Tajudeen.
