230 image/gif zambia-un-org.gif 15839 <p><p>The inability of the country's medical-training institutions to produce enough health professionals is one of the major contributing factors20. Despite being independent for over 40 years and its population growth, Zambia has been stuck with only one medical school and a handful of nursing and technical schools.&nbsp; Each year the medical school graduates about 50 to 60 doctors, who are then committed to an 18-month internship in one of the country's few large public-health facilities. Other factors contributing to the worsening of the human resource for health (HRH) crisis include exodus of trained professionals to other countries in Africa and overseas, internal brain drain, an outdated medical-training infrastructure, HIV/AIDS mortality and faulty government management . Other contributing factors include poor and unattractive conditions of service; emergence of a competitive local, regional and international market for health staff; increasing demands on health staff due to increases in the numbers of HIV/AIDS patients; increased absence from work and high staff deaths attributable to the HIV/AIDS epidemic among the workers; and restrictions on new staff recruitments arising from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC )completion conditionality (i.e. a two year hiring freeze).&nbsp;&nbsp; </p> <p><strong><br></strong></p><p><strong>Availability of Health Workers <br></strong>Anecdotal evidence from MOH shows that the past problems in the recruitment and deployment system such as ghost workers made it difficult to adequately account for available staff. Analysis of the data in the Human Resource for Health (HRH) Strategic Plan revealed that the total staff increased by only 4 % between 2005 and 2007.&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br>In addition, the staff to population ratios for doctors and nurses in 2005 were two and a half to three times higher than those recommended for Africa by the World Health Organization (WHO), i.e. 1:5,000 and 1:700 for doctors and nurses respectively. In 2007 the staff to population ratios were 2 times higher than the WHO recommended ratios for doctors and nurses. </p> <p>Analysis of the data by province revealed that rural and poor provinces such as Northen, Luapula and North Western provinces tend to have poor staff to population ratios than the urban provinces such as Lusaka and Copperbelt. For instance provinces such as Lusaka might have a doctor population ratio of 1:6,247 while remote provinces such as the Northern Province have a ratio of 1:65,763. This illustration demonstrates inequities in the delivery of the basic health services in the country.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br></p></p> 2009-06-20T21:55:49+02:00 The Ministry of health (MoH) considers the availability of appropriate human resources at all the levels of health care as a critical factor in ensuring the delivery of efficient and effective health care to all. Zambia is currently experiencing a critical shortage of health workers, which is significantly undermining its capacity to provide the basic health care services to the people. true 2 223 zambia-human-resources-in-health true 2010-03-12T06:47:18+01:00 560