By Joyce Ojanji
Despite ongoing progress in developing the health workforce in the African region over the past few decades, projections indicate a potential shortfall of 6.1 million health workers by 2030, which is necessary to effectively tackle the Region’s disease burden through comprehensive health promotion, disease prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliation.
To assist countries assess their health workforce education capacity, supply, demand and need for health workers and facilitate integrating health workforce planning into Health Labour Marker Analysis, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa has launched the Health Labour Market Analysis (HLMA) Support Tool.
The WHO-designed HLMA Support Tool offers a novel workforce planning approach to estimate the needed health workers to address the disease burden of a country or geographical areas based on the essential service packages and the professional standards of care.
Whilst launching the Tool and officially opening the Advanced Training on Epidemology-Based Health Workforce Needs Assessment Using HILMA Support Tool Version 3.0 , Dr Abdourahmane Diallo, the WHO Representative in Kenya, emphasised that stimulating adequate and sustainable investment in the health workforce requires comprehensive insights into past and present health workforce dynamics and future projections under different scenarios, and that the HLMA Support Tool, which has already been used by 12 countries, is critical in achieving that outcome.
“The HLMA Support Tool allows users to assess education capacity, health workforce supply, demand and needs, and identify investment requirements for employment. I encourage you to fully engage in this training and build your capacity to support countries in conducting robust health labour market analyses,” he stated.
Dr. Patrick Amoth, Director General Ministry of Health Kenya, noted that the health workforce is the cornerstone of any functional healthcare system, the only living pillar of the health system and achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) depends on having an adequately skilled , well distributed, and well supported workforce .
Notably, sub Saharan Africa, including Kenya, has been facing significant challenges, such as inadequate numbers of health, labour mismatches, and insufficient training and investment in the health workforce.
‘’The launch of version 3 of the HLMA Support Tool marks a significant milestones as it is critical to understanding the current workforce situation, indentifying gaps, and planning effectively to meet future health needs. It helps to forecast workforce demand and supply ,providing data for evidence based decision making in health workforce planning,” he said.
He called on stakeholders from governments, academia and international organizations to collaborate closely in using this tools and insights to improve health workforce planning, noting that the MoH Kenya is fully committed to the implementation of the HLMST and the findings of the epidemiology based needs assessments in the HLMA. This will enable the ministry not only to address immediate health workforce challenges but also to prepare for future health crises and evolving population needs.
According to WHO, nearly 27% of the trained health workers remain unemployed, underscoring a mismatch between training outputs and actual job creation. This gap requires a 43% increase in current funding levels dedicated to health workforce employment. A health labour market analysis, already conducted in 22 countries, is critical to stimulating policy reforms and investments to address these challenges.
The experts, after attending the workshop, are expected to apply the tool in support of Member States that request technical assistance related to health labour market analysis and will champion the generation of evidence needed to inform health workforce investment plans and compacts. These are critical milestones in the implementation of the Africa Health Workforce Investment Charter which was launched in May 2024.
