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

HEALTH WORKFORCE PLAN, CASE STUDY OF KENYA
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Executive summary
With the help of World Health Organization (WHO), this paper has identified Kenya as a
low-middle income country whose health sector has a lot to be done. For improvement
purposes, the paper has come up with a workforce plan. The outlined workforce place will
solve the problem of health worker shortage in the country. In the first subtitle, context and
environment, it has been revealed that Kenya has been grappling with a shortage of 42,800
health workers which has made it very hard for the country to meet its health goals. The
second subtitle, the external environment, has presented health worker shortage as a big
problem especially among the sub-Saharan African countries which has made it very hard for
them to achieve universal healthcare. In the current workforce profile of Kenya, the paper has
revealed that the country has enough institutions which can accommodate enough healthcare
workers for its market. To close the gap on healthcare worker shortage, the paper has
proposed that the government of Kenya should invest on its education system to encourage
more learners in the healthcare sector

HEALTH WORKFORCE PLAN, CASE STUDY OF KENYA
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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