Handbook on monitoring and evaluation of human resources for health

Overview

The latest medicine and the newest technologies can have little impact on human health unless there are systems in place to deliver them. The reality today, however, is that health systems all over the world are suffering from years of neglect. One of the most obvious manifestations of that neglect is a crippling lack of trained health workers. In many countries, lack of personnel is one of the most important constraints to strengthening the delivery of primary and other health services, including curative, promotional, preventive and rehabilitative services.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the health workforce crisis is so great that 36 countries are considered to have a critical shortage of health care professionals to provide minimum coverage of even the most basic services in maternal, newborn and child health. In many of the poorest countries of the world, the situation is worsened by the continual loss of health personnel seeking better opportunities elsewhere. The effects of poor workforce planning and development are felt everywhere.

In Asia and the Pacific, many countries have a shortage of health workers capable of treating chronic and emerging diseases. In Europe, the countries of the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union inherited a workforce that was especially ill-suited to the demands facing modern health care systems. Clearly, if countries are to get anywhere near meeting their health system objectives, including the health-related Millennium Development Goals, they need to be able to provide better access to appropriately trained health workers.

The first step is to work out where the gaps are. Yet many countries currently lack the technical capacity to accurately monitor their own health workforce: data are often unreliable and outof-date, common definitions and proven analytical tools are absent, skills and experience for assessing crucial policy issues are lacking. This Handbook aims to increase that technical capacity. It offers health managers, researchers and policy makers a comprehensive, standardized and user-friendly reference for monitoring and evaluating human resources for health. It brings together an analytical framework with strategy options for improving the health workforce information and evidence base, as well as country experiences to highlight approaches that have worked.