Ambitious human resources plan to increase training of health professionals

14 October 2011

Prof Geoffrey Setswe, Head of the School of Health Sciences

Monash South Africa’s School of Health Sciences hails the new human resources strategy for the health sector 2012-2017, which was launched by the Minister of Health at Wits University this week, as very ambitious and geared towards increasing the training of health professionals and dealing with serious human resources shortages in South Africa’s health services.

“Besides ensuring that the health workforce has an optimal working environment, rewarding careers, innovative and efficient recruitment and the retention of the health workforce, it is clear from the new strategy that the government is prepared to invest a great deal of money in the education of health professionals with the aim of substantially increasing the numbers in the next eight years,” said Professor Keitshepile Geoff Setswe, the head of the new School.

 “It is also clear that the government has an ambitious plan of substantially improving and developing the academic health complexes which have become dilapidated and to revitalise the nursing colleges that were closed, to increase their capacity for the training of health professionals.

“Evidence shows that a well-trained and maintained human workforce is critical to health-system performance and outcomes.    

“The new human resources for health strategy could not have come at a better time,” says Prof Setswe. “It will help close gaps between human resources in the public and private health sectors. It has been a concern that these gaps should be closed before the implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI) over the next 14 years. We also anticipate that the new human resources strategy for health will provide more ‘hands on deck’ to enable South Africa to achieve the health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.”

“The new School of Health Sciences at Monash South Africa recognised the importance of training human resources for health by hosting a two-day Human Resources for Health (HRH) forum at the Monash South Africa campus in November last year. The Forum discussed current and future challenges with respect to the health workforce in South Africa and other African countries. In particular, the Forum focused on the available evidence base for developing and implementing informed policy and strategies with respect to the health workforce in Africa and how these decisions impacted on the health and wellbeing of people.

“The Forum helped the new School of Health Sciences to take a firm decision to use its public purpose mandate to support government through the training of public health professionals, psychologists, counselors and, in future, nurses and emergency medical personnel. The health professionals training plan of Monash South Africa fits in well with the new human resources strategy.   

Role of private health training providers
Prof Setswe believes that there is an important role that private health professional training providers, such as Monash South Africa, can play in achieving the targets of the new strategic plan.

“Private/public partnerships could increase the volume of health professionals who are trained by private providers if both sectors are able to share resources. If the partnerships make it easy for trainees in private training institutes to do their practical work in public health services and vice versa, the country would be able to meet its training targets a lot sooner than the human resource strategy suggests,” says Setswe.