Addressing Africa's health workforce crisis

McKinsey Quarterly

Volumn , Issue 1, 2008, Pages

  Conway, Michael D ^a   Gupta, Srishti ^b   Khajavi, Kamiar ^c  

^a Philadelphia Office   (United States)

^b Boston Office   (United States)

^c Washington   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 39449087641     PISSN: 00475394     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (4)

1. The countries include Angola, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. From autumn of 2006 to spring of 2007 we spoke with more than 40 people, in both the developing and the developed world, representing a range of public health-related expertise, including technical experts, representatives of bilateral- and multilateral-development organizations, donors, heads of government, researchers, and program implementation experts.
2. Iran's paraprofessional health workers (behvarz) visit the homes of underserved populations, for instance, providing vaccinations and monitoring childhood growth. Brazil uses teams of doctors, nurses, dentists, and paraprofessionals to support impoverished areas. Both countries have significantly improved their health outcomes as a result. In Brazil, for example, rates of infant mortality were nearly halved from 1990 to 2002. Iran's rate of mortality for children under age five was cut in half from 1984 to 2000 while its immunization rates for communicable diseases increased to 95 percent, from 20 percent.
3. Fernando Vaz et al., "Training medical assistants for surgery," Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 1999, Volume 77, Number 8, pp. 688-91;
4. see also Garvey Chilopora et al., "Postoperative outcomes of cesarean sections and other major emergency obstetric surgery by clinical officers and medical officers in Malawi," Human Resources for Health, 2007, Volume 5, Number 17.