[afro-nets] Africa Losing Nurses to Britain (9)

[Dr. D. Dovlo <dovlod@yahoo.com>]

Africa Losing Nurses to Britain (9)
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Dear Dr. Odutola,

Thanks very much for your message that I think shows us the way
to go. There have been quite a lot of activity on migration and
HRH and it is time for more concrete action. I will like to re-
fer AFRO-Netters to a couple of other resources that cover the
problem of health worker migration.

The Global Health trust website -
http://www.globalhealthtrust.org/Publication.htm

This features work on HRH as part of a "Joint Learning Initia-
tive" a Rockefeller Foundation, World Bank, WHO supported ven-
ture with 7 working groups studying the available information on
Human Resources in Health (all aspects) but with work on migra-
tion. This is ongoing but final reports are expected soon.

The DFID Health Systems resource Centre -
http://www.eldis.org/healthsystems/dossiers/hr/
has some HR resources including on migration

The Human Resources for Health Journal (Online free access jour-
nal) http://www.human-resources-health.com/articles/browse.asp
has published articles of work on various aspects of HRH with
interesting articles on wage differentials etc.

I understand NEPAD, AU and IOM have done some consultations with
registering and using diaspora resources for some specific coun-
tries in addition to the MIDA (?Migration for Development of Af-
rica?) and RQAN (Return of Qualified African Nationals) programs
which were run by IOM.

I believe in Ghana, The Ghana Health Service organized a Na-
tional Forum on Human Resources in July 2003 with wide stake-
holder participation and some of the ideas (e.g. a Task force on
HRH) that you have raised have been proposed. I think South Af-
rica has had a similar forum.

The 2003 East and Southern Africa Health Ministers Conference in
Livingstone Zambia in November 2003 was on the subject of Human
Resources with a strong element of the debates on what to do
about migration and its effects on services and as I think was
reported on this list the recent WHO World Health Assembly dis-
cussed at length and with some difficulty the issue of migration
of HRH and came out with a resolution - but alas, if only reso-
lutions changed things....

I agree with your suggestion, I do think that each affected
country also needs an internal "Task Force" working to plan and
implement the right policies whilst the regional and interna-
tional ones work to gain the international/global consensus
needed to save the health of Africans.

Delanyo Dovlo
Accra, Ghana
mailto:dovlod@yahoo.com