The World Health Organization (WHO) says Africa has a shortage of health care workers. The issue was addressed in Namibia this week at a forum in Windhoek.
Speaking at the first WHO Africa Health Workforce Forum held in the capital, Namibia’s minister of health and social services, Kalumbi Shangula, warned that Africa’s shortage of health workers will impede the continent from achieving universal health coverage by 2030.
In order to reach universal health coverage by 2030 as envisaged in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals report, Africa needs to invest in training programs, offer incentives for health practitioners to remain in their home countries, and create initiatives to attract health professionals in the diaspora back to the continent.
Shangula spoke at the Africa Health Workforce Investment Charter event this week.
“The number of Africans who have left the continent in search of greener pastures in other parts of the world are staggering,” Shangula said. “It is a matter that needs to be addressed as a top priority for African governments and indeed all those who wish to see a shift in the historical as well as current trends.”
Africa has a ratio of 1.55 health workers per 1,000 people. That is below the recommended WHO threshold of 4.55 health workers per 1,000 people.
Africa’s Center for Disease Control Director-General Jean Kesaya says achieving universal health coverage by 2030 will require an additional 1.8 million health workers on the continent.
He says the critical shortage is projected to reach about 6.1 million by 2030 and is made worse by recurrent public health emergencies faced by countries on a daily basis.
“In 2023 alone, Africa recorded 166 disease outbreaks and the trend I see in 2024 is not good,” Kesaya said. “AU member states are far from realizing the 2017 AU Assembly decisions that called for rapid recruitment, training and deployment of 2 million institutionalized community health workers by 2030.”
Global Health Director for the Africa Diaspora Development Institute (ADDI) Lee Whitaker says the institution has opened doors for diasporan healthcare workers to return to Africa and reverse the brain drain. He says the organization has “access to over forty-five-thousand black African physicians in America and only needs an invitation from the heart of any African state to come abroad.”
Dr. Arikana Chihombori is the president of the ADDI, an organization that is mobilizing the African diaspora to return and invest in the continent.
“Let the diaspora come in and invest in for-profit-clinics in Africa as well as for volunteer work in Africa,” Chihombori said. “It has to be balanced! Because if they are going to leave their work where they are in Europe, in America, they can be here a little bit longer if they are going to make money and also donate some of their time. So a program that allows them to make money while they are stopping Africans from going to India and at the same time also giving to those who are less fortunate is actually a program that can be sustained but to completely hundred percent volunteer is not going to work, it’s not sustainable”.
The forum, which was attended by health dignitaries from all over the world, concluded Wednesday with the launch of the Africa Health Workforce Investment Charter that aims to mobilize and sustain development, performance and retention of the health workforce in African Union countries.
