Health Workforce Plan, Case Study of Kenya

Running Head: HEALTH WORKFORCE PLAN, CASE STUDY OF KENYA 1
Health Workforce Plan, Case Study of Kenya
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HEALTH WORKFORCE PLAN, CASE STUDY OF KENYA
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Context and Environment................................................................................................................3
External Environment..................................................................................................................5
Internal Environment...................................................................................................................6
The Current Health Workforce Profile in Kenya............................................................................7
Future Workforce Profile in Kenya.................................................................................................8
Gap Analysis and Closing Strategies...............................................................................................9
Conclusion, Review, Evaluation Strategy and Next Steps............................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................11

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Health Workforce Plan, Case Study of Kenya
Introduction
Currently, the shortage of health workers among the countries which have poor health
indicators has hit the headlines. This trend has brought about some far-reaching impacts on
the countries’ ability to provide essential health services, fight diseases and implement
effective life-saving interventions (Knevel, Gussy & Farmer, 2017). World Health
Organization (WHO) has estimated that the current workforce in most of the countries under
the poor health indicator category will need to be scaled up by as much as 140% in order to
attain the health development targets which have been set by the Millennium Declaration
(World Health Organization, 2016). Further, WHO revealed that shortage of healthcare
workforce has been very serious among those countries to an extent that there has not been
enough human capacity to absorb, deploy and efficiently utilize the substantial funds which
are considered necessary to improve health care sector. This paper proposes a health
workforce plan to solve the problem of health worker shortage in Kenya.
Context and Environment
According to a health report drafted on March 2018, Kenya was grappling with a
shortage of 42,800 health workers, a condition which made it hard for this sub-Saharan
African country to achieve universal healthcare (McMenamin & Mannion, 2017). According
to this report, the number of medics in the country was far below the standard recommended
by the World Health Organization which is 23 health workers per 10,000 people. The report
revealed that there were 63,000 health workers in the whole country, which included 405
dentists, 293 radiologists, 20,981 nurses, 2286 medical officers, 1104 pharmacists, 22

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radiation protection personnel and 3284 clinical officers. To meet the WHO health worker
requirement of 23 workers per 10,000 people, the report outlined that a total of 105, 800 more
were required (Pozo-Martin, Nove, Lopes, Campbell, Buchan, Dussault & Siyam, 2017).
Critically, the statistics above portray the picture of a country which can barely meet
the health requirements of its citizens from the shortage of health workers. Currently, the
health worker density of Kenya is six workers per 10,000 people, ranking behind by 18
workers per every 10,000 people. Based on these statistics, a health workforce plan is
necessary because of various reasons (Addicott, Maguire, Honeyman & Jabbal, 2015). First, it
will help the country solve and prevent its problem of health worker shortage from escalating.
Through the health workforce plan, the country will be in a position to identify the reasons
behind its health worker shortage and implement measures which can close those gaps.
Secondly, the workforce plan will enable the country to forecast on its healthcare system
(Tsofa, Goodman, Gilson & Molyneux, 2017). For instance, based on the current health
worker shortage gap, it is expected that the gap will continue to widen because the country’s
population has kept increasing. Also, the gap is expected to keep on widening because the
number of health care workers who retire annually is more than those who are recruited into
professional practice.
The main goal of this health workforce plan will be to reduce the wide gap in health
worker shortage experienced in Kenya. As noted earlier, the country has a health worker
density of six health workers per 10000 people which is far much below the standard set by
the World Health Organization (23 health workers per 10000 people). The performance of
this workforce plan will be evaluated on the basis of improved health worker density in the
country (Mack, Wong, McKenna, Lemons, Odhiambo & Agot, 2015).). For instance, the