Boosting Human Resources in the Health sector

A TWO-DAY conference on Human Resources for Health (HRH) was held in Abuja during the week to review the state of universal health coverage in Nigeria, discuss the challenges of production, absorption, retention and distribution of health workers and also bring to fore the issues of HRH financing.

   The conference brought together stakeholders in the sector from all the 36 states of the federation, some of who took turn to highlight achievements they had recorded in their respective states and the challenges they are facing in getting health personnel to man distinctive positions in hospitals and other health facilities.

  

In his keynote address, the Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, said that as a result of dissatisfaction with grossly inadequate manpower to handle managerial functions in healthcare, the federal government, through the National Collaborating Centres for Education and Training in Health Planning and Management and Health Information Management, has, since inception in 1990, trained a total of 1,405 health managers. 

  The minister said in order to get best professionals in the various fields in the sector, three training centres were established in 1990 at the Universities of Benin, Ilorin and Maiduguri with technical support from foreign higher educational institutions which include; Leeds Polytechnic, The University of Hull, the University of York and John Hopkins University. He said the training centres admitted candidates from the federal, states and local government services including the private sector, in order for the entire country to be covered.  

   “After five years of this collaboration, Nigeria decided to take full ownership of the training programme. New courses were introduced and three more centres were added namely, the University of Calabar for Health Planning and Management; Abia State University, Uturu for Health Economics Management; and the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria for Healthcare Financing.”

   Giving the breakdown of health managers trained since inception, the minister said the centres had 1,185 graduates of Health Planning and Management, 200 graduates of Health Information Management and 20 graduates of Health Economics Management, making a total of 1,405 health managers. 

 He explained: “At the present time, 83 candidates have been admitted into different courses of study for the 2012/2013 batch. Plans are currently underway to increase further the number of these collaborating training centres, as there has been a steady increase in the number of applications for the various training programmes.

By : Emeka Anuforo and Itunu Ajayi -- Abuja

Leadership