Health Workforce Planning

Running head: HEALTH WORKFORCE PLANNING
HEALTH WORKFORCE PLANNING
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1HEALTH WORKFORCE PLANNING
Executive Summary
An optimum healthcare workforce, is essential for a nation to maintain universal health
coverage, ensure achievement of positive health outcomes and overall development of a healthy
nation. According to the World Health Organization, Ethiopia has been estimated to suffer from
a health worker crisis, with a dearth of maternity coverage, physician services and diagnostic
technologies. The major areas of crisis include: excessive migration, rural and urban inequities,
lack of equal skill mix and concentration of credible workers in private sectors. The following
report aims to address these issues using the recommendations outlined by the World Health
Organization.

2HEALTH WORKFORCE PLANNING
Table of Contents
Introduction..........................................................................................................................2
Brief Overview: Ethiopia.................................................................................................2
Environmental Scan.............................................................................................................3
Data Profile..........................................................................................................................5
Critical Issues and Possible Strategies.................................................................................8
Framework Strategies........................................................................................................11
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................13
References..........................................................................................................................14

3HEALTH WORKFORCE PLANNING
Introduction
Brief Overview: Ethiopia
According to the World Health Statistics 2015 report, Ethiopia has been placed by the
World Health Organization in the grouping of low income nations. Further statistics reported by
the WHO in the nation’s achievement of a the Millennium Developmental Goals (MDGs),
Ethiopia scores poorly in terms of provision of maternal healthcare services, with only a reported
10% of births occurring in the presence of qualified health workers, coupled with only 34% of
maternal health coverage as compared to the targets of 90 % and 100 % respectively – hence
depicting a severe shortage of skilled health workforce availability for expectant mothers. The
nation was further reported to project high rates of mortality in 2013, due to communicable
diseases (559), non-communicable diseases (476) and injuries (94) (World Health Organization,
2015). Such high rates of mortality across disease based causative factors may be an indirect
indicator of an inadequacy in terms of staff skilled with deliverance of services pertaining to
disease prevention and management (Reich et al., 2016). Additionally, increments in the
percentages of mortality of infants within the age group of 5 years, from 10 to 15% due to
intrapartum related complications, further emphasizes the inadequate maternal health workforce
of the nation. While the rate of maternal mortality has reduced commendably from 1400 per 100,
000 live births at 1990 to 990 in 2000, the rate continues to remain considerably high in the year
2013, estimated to be 420 (World Health Organization, 2015). While such alarming health
statistics clearly project the need to improve present health workforce in the nation, Ethiopia has
also been attributed to possess a severe crisis in terms of a healthcare staff shortage, which has
been estimated to be only 0.7 per 1000 population - a value considerably low in comparison to