Statement: Launch of the draft Framework for the Human Resources for Health Plan

The National Health Act requires that the National Health Council (formerly known as Minmec) develop policy and guidelines for the development, distribution and effective utilization of human resources within the national health system. In implementing this provision of the Act, we started a process of developing Human Resources for Health Plan in September last year.

The framework we are presenting today is the outcome of a prolonged interaction with various role-players in the health sector in general and has been recently approved by Cabinet for public comment.

Therefore, Programme Director, it is not because of the unnecessary noise that has been made by the Democratic Alliance that we are presenting this document to you today. We have followed the appropriate government policy development processes and we are emphasizing consultation with all interested parties to ensure collective participation in the finalization of the Human Resources for Health Plan for our country.

Over the years, our health system has had to deal with loss of experienced health professionals from rural to urban areas, from public to private sector and from SA to mainly developed countries.

There is a problem of inadequate supply of certain categories of health professionals such as pharmacists. This is also experienced even at entry level due to selection processes and a stiff competition with other careers that our young people can opt for.

On the other hand we have to deal with serious mal-distribution, as is the case with medical doctors who are mainly concentrated in urban settings.

The remuneration of health professionals has always been mentioned as a major factor undermining our staff retention efforts. However we do know that factors relating to people management, facility management, availability of necessary tools for service delivery and reasonable accommodation contribute significantly to this challenge.

It is important to also acknowledge that our human resource challenges are characteristics of health systems in many other developing countries. Hence, the issue of human resources remains very topical in the global health agenda. The World Health Organization has been mandated to build its internal capacity so that it can proactively help various countries in addressing health HR challenges. The World Health Assembly also resolved to dedicate next years World Health Day to human resources in health.

The Human Resource Plan for Health should provide an overall framework that brings together various interventions that are currently underway to deal with the challenges around human resources.

These interventions include:

• Bilateral and multilateral effort to manage international migration of health workers
• Integration of human resource planning in the building and revitalisation of health facilities
• Improvement of overall working conditions for health workers
• As well as the provision of rural and scarce skills allowances

The plan should also provide a framework within which all stakeholders can contribute in addressing these challenges either in their individual effort or in partnership with government.

The Framework we are presenting today addresses a number of issues. It identifies certain activities for the Department to ensure that government firmly fulfils this responsibility of stewardship over the health system.

While HR planning requires standardisation and benchmarking, there has been a growing realisation of a need to develop context-sensitive workload indicators. With serious challenges of internal and international migration of health professionals, it is becoming very difficult to stick to the ideal norms and standards. We expect that this issue will generate a lot of debate and hopefully lead to the development of an innovative approach to dealing with the challenge of supply and demand in our health system.

For the Plan to be on the pulse in addressing HR challenges in this country, stakeholder participation in reviewing this document and proposals made is critical. It is also critical that the Human Resource Plan should be implemented as a matter of urgency after adoption.

From next week (August 10), the department will host a number of briefing sessions for the various stakeholders to ensure that the framework is understood and attention is drawn to critical areas that each stakeholder grouping should not miss in its submission. Separate briefings have been arranged to accommodate diverse interests of various stakeholders in the health sector.

What we would like to achieve is an HR plan that harmonises the overall efforts of government, private sector and other stakeholders in support of the Human Resource Development Strategy for the country. This framework calls upon all role-players to pool efforts to ensure achievement of the country?s health goals. It calls upon both the public and private sectors to work together to bring better lives to our people. This is also a central message we initiated with the development of the Health Sector Charter and we would like to extend to other interventions being made to improve the health status of our population.

I hope that all stakeholders will engage with this process and provide us with the valuable inputs for incorporation into the Human Resources Plan for Health.

Thank you.