LSTM embarks on a 3 million Euro research project to strengthen the health workforce in Africa

As previous research has focussed on the need to train more health staff, there has been serious neglect of the need to improve performance of the existing health workforce.

Improving the performance for existing health workers in Africa is critical to saving lives.

PERFORM aims to bridge this gap, Dr. Sebastian Baine of Makerere School of Public Health in Uganda is a keen advocate of the project, he said:

“PERFORM is an ambitious project that will lead to strengthening the performance of our current workforce and the wider health system”.

Dr. Patricia Akwengo of the University of Ghana echoes this view:

“The human resource crisis in the Ghana Health Sector challenges our ability to meet the Millennium Development Goals relating to maternal, child health, Malaria, TB and HIV by 2015.  The current policy in Ghana of increasing the numbers of health training schools is necessary but focusing on improving the performance of existing staff is critical for better health in Ghana.”

Dr. Sydney Ndeki explained how the Tanzanian partners will use the research process to work in partnership with managers at district level to “address local problems by innovating with human resource strategies to retain and develop health workers”. 

ENDS 

Tim Martineau
Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management
International Health Group
T.Martineau@liv.ac.uk

Notes to Editors

The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) was founded in 1898 and was the first institution in the world dedicated to research and teaching in tropical medicine. LSTM has a strong track record in getting research into policy and practice.

For more information on the human resource crisis in Africa see Africa Health Workforce Observatory http://www.hrh-observatory.afro.who.int

PERFORM is supported by the European Commission with a grant of Euro 3 million.

LSTM’s partners in the research project are: