Viewpoint: HIV/AIDS and the health workforce crisis: What are the next steps?
- 31 March 2005
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Wiley in Tropical Medicine & International Health
- Vol. 10 (4), 300-304
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2005.01397.x
Abstract
The definitive version is available at www3.interscience.wiley.comIn scaling up antiretroviral treatment (ART), financing is fast becoming less of a constraint than the human resources to ensure the implementation of the programmes. In the countries hardest affected by the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) pandemic, AIDS increases workloads, professional frustration and burn-out. It affects health workers also directly, contributing to rising sick leave and attrition rates. This burden is shouldered by a health workforce weakened already by chronic deficiencies in training, distribution and retention. In these countries, health workforce issues can no longer be analysed from the traditional perspective of human resource development, but should start from the position that entire societies are in a process of social involution of a scale unprecedented in human history. Strategies that proved to be effective and correct in past conditions need be reviewed, particularly in the domains of human resource management and policy-making, education and international aid. True paradigm shifts are thus required, without which the fundamental changes required to effectively strengthen the health workforce are unlikely to be initiatedKeywords
This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
- Scaling-up HIV treatment programmes in resource-limited settingsAIDS, 2004
- Responding to the global human resources crisisThe Lancet, 2004
- HIV overshadows South African health advancesThe Lancet, 2004
- Implementing antiretroviral therapy in resource-constrained settingsAIDS, 2004
- Health workforce imbalances in times of globalization: brain drain or professional mobility?The International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 2003
- The Economic Consequences of HIV/AIDS in Southern AfricaIMF Working Papers, 2002
- Underlying reasons for sexual conduct and condom use among expatriates posted in AIDS endemic areasAIDS Care, 1998
- Occupational risk of HIV infection among Western health care professionals posted in AIDS endemic areasAIDS Care, 1998
- A prospective study on the risk of exposure to HIV during surgery in ZambiaAIDS, 1995
- Mortality among female nurses in the face of the AIDS epidemicAIDS, 1994