Monash Africa Centre hosts Human Resources for Health forum

11 November 2010

From the left: Prof Brian Oldenburg of the International Public Health Unit at MU; Prof Steve Wesselingh, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences at MU; Ass Prof Dina Burger, Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor, Research, at MSA; Prof Geoffrey Setswe, Head of the School of Health Sciences at MSA; and Prof Tyrone Pretorius, Pro Vice-Chancellor and President, MSA.

The group of delegates

Most African countries face rising death rates and reduced life expectancy. Health workers tend to be overburdened and overstressed and often lack the support they so badly need. Nearly all African countries have skill imbalances and most of their health workers tend to be concentrated in the urban areas.

At a two-day Human Resources for Health Forum, held on 8 and 9 November at Monash South Africa, delegates included key academics from universities including:  Witwatersrand, Cape Town, KwaZulu Natal, Western Cape, and Howard University; as well as decision-makers in the fields of medicine and health from South Africa and other countries from organisations such as Life HealthCare, Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital, Oxfam and Atlantic Philanthropies.

At the Forum, which was held under the auspices of the Monash Africa Centre, a joint initiative of Monash University, Australia and the Monash South Africa campus, participants had an opportunity to look at the evidence, to discuss current and future challenges with regard to the health workforce in South Africa and other African countries, and to propose future strategies for dealing with shortages.

In his welcome address Prof Tyrone Pretorius Pro Vice-Chancellor and President of Monash South Africa, said that the Monash Africa Centre aims to bring together researchers with similar interests and provide a platform for them to engage with issues of critical importance to the development of the region.

Dr Sharon Vasukthaven, from Life HealthCare, presented current perspectives on human resources in health services, Prof Mike Toole of the Burnett Institute in Melbourne, discussed the role of human resources in improving public health and
Dr Su-Lin Chong from the Sunway Medical Centre, Kuala Lumpur, discussed the training and education of health professionals from a Malaysian perspective.

Prof Daniel Ncayiyana, Chair of the new Monash South Africa School of Health Sciences advisory board, said that through the establishment of this School, Monash seeks to contribute to the African health crisis by producing public health workers for the SADC region, initially through the provision of its Bachelor of Public Health degree.

Prof Ncayiyana said that South Africa faces a human resources for health crisis that can be attributed to several structural problems including insufficient training capacity, with only eight medical schools producing 1200 doctors per year to serve nearly 50 million people. Although the Department of Health has suggested that the number of graduates should be doubled, the will and an appropriate investment will be required to do this.

He showed that there has always been migration among medical doctors worldwide and experience in India indicates that there is a need to provide more personnel than are actually needed, to allow for attrition and migration. He noted that capacity problems and shortages in the field of nursing had resulted from South Africa shutting down its nursing colleges in the 1990s.

The majority of health care professionals in South Africa also choose to work in the private sector, leaving shortages in the public sector, and there is a difference in staffing in urban and rural environments. He felt that South Africa also has a skewed priory-setting bias towards curative medicine as opposed to primary or preventative care and it hasn’t been clearly determined what kind and level of healthcare workers are required.

Prof Ncayiyana said that South Africa would probably eventually have to follow the example of Korea and other countries and allow the private sector to pitch in with regard to the provision of training and education in the area of healthcare.

In his keynote address Prof William Pick, former President of the South African Medical Research Council, provided an interesting historical perspective on human resources in the area of health in southern Africa dating back to the 16th century.

On the second day of the forum Prof Steve Wesselingh, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash University, discussed global trends in medical and health sciences education; Prof Geoffrey Setswe, Head of the new School of Health Sciences at Monash South Africa, discussed new approaches to training and educating health professionals in Africa; and Prof Brian Oldenburg of the International Public Health Unit at Monash University, suggested ways to connect the global, regional and local perspectives.