Human Resources for Diseases Control: Administrative Function or Strategic Priorities

Abstract

The health sector is one of the most challenged sectors in developing countries given to the shortage of trained manpower particularly in the developing countries. Human resource is a very important aspect of any functioning health system. However this aspect is often neglected in the development of the health system and when it comes to the disease control programmes not enough importance is given to this aspect. Generally human resource in health is often ignored and just seen as an administrative function in disease control programmes. This affects the overall effectiveness of the programmes in terms of its impact on disease control. We observe an acute shortage of trained manpower especially in the developing countries. There are several reasons of such a crisis like situation in human resources in health system. Among them some are like HIV/AIDS Epidemic, Training Capacity, Brain drain, Poor working conditions and Remuneration. Especially the HIV/AIDS control programmes have suffered a lot due the shortage of trained manpower particularly in countries where HIV is among the main health problems. However there are ways in which such problems can be addressed to ensure the sustainability of HIV control and other disease control initiatives in developing world to reach near to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG –particularly Goal- ) in health. In this paper authors discuss the evidence based solutions to the problem of human resource in health sector to combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases in developing countries. Some of the initiative to address the problem may be improving the training capacity, improving use of available skills, staff retention and support, recognizing the health workers rights and putting them first along with taking care of administrative issues involved in the management of the human resources.