Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE government has urged non-state actors to continue investing in Human Resources for Health (HRH) as part of a key strategy to accelerate maternal health services provision in the country.
The call was made in Dar es Salaam by the Director of Health Services from the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government (PORALG) Dr Ntuli Kapologwe, during a plenary session organised by the Benjamin Mkapa Foundation (BMF).
The session was held under the title ‘Improving Human Resources for reproductive, maternal, newborn child and adolescent health (RMNCAH) Services, Innovations and Prospects’. It was led by the Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete Foundation in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children.
“The government has invested in the improvement of infrastructure and we cannot address the shortage of skilled staff in these facilities alone. We need more partners to come and invest in HRH deployment,” said Dr Ntuli.
According to her, the health sector needs a workforce with competencies to provide care at all levels of health facilities.
She went on to explain that around 90 per cent of maternal deaths occurring in health facilities are caused by inadequate human resources for the health sector, and sometimes lack of competent and skilled health care workers.
Dr Ntuli also spoke of the inadequate distribution of skilled labor force in the health sector in the country, saying Dar es Salaam region alone has a total of 40 per cent leaving the remaining 60 per cent for other regions.
“We appreciate partners like BMF, Amref, MDH and many other who have continued to invest on HRH, but we also have the challenge of unequal distribution of human resources,” he explained adding that the government will soon roll out the Voluntarism Guideline and strategy to curb shortage of skilled health personnel at health facilities.
Earlier, the BMF Director of Programs Rahel Sheiza said private sector has contributed an average of 3,000 health care workers who have been deployed in the public health facilities, however, the statistics haven’t been included in the public data as a result of the recorded shortage of 53 per cent of the available HRH gap.
“As key players from Non-State Actors, we assume that the lack of a functional information management System that can accommodate our investment in the public sector, has affected the right projection of human resources for health,” she said.
BMF has so far deployed a total of 3,760 health care workers in 2,063 health facilities in 190 Local Government Authorities (LGA’s) and 26 points of entries in Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar. 1,263 Health care workers are earmarked in 161 councils to support RMNCAH services.
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