at the Launch of the National Human Resource Plan for Health during the World
Health Day Emperorâs Palace, Kempton Park
7 April 2006
Programme Director,
Our Special guest, the WHO-AFRO Regional Director, Dr Luis Sambo,
My colleagues,
Members of the National Health Council,
Members of the health portfolio committee,
Health officials and representatives of other government departments,
Representatives of academic institutions,
Statutory councils,
Professional associations,
Organised labour,
Private health sector and other stakeholders,
Honoured guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today is a very important day in the health calendar, it is World Health
Day. This year we are dedicating this day to the most important component of
the health care delivery system, our health workers under the theme: âWorking
together for health.â
As we observe this day here in South Africa by launching our National Human
Resource Plan (NHRP) for health, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is in
Lusaka, Zambia, launching its annual World Health Report, which is also
dedicated to the subject of human resources for health this year.
We are fortunate as a country that despite the importance of the event in
Lusaka the WHO Regional Director for Africa is with us today as we observe this
historic day for the health sector in South Africa. We truly appreciate your
presence here with us especially since this comes a few days after the eighth
World Conference on Violence Prevention and Safety Promotion, which you also
attended in Durban.
It is indeed a great pleasure for me to present the Human Resources Plan
(HRP) for health to our stakeholders, members of the media and all of you
gathered at this conference today.
The National Health Act No. 61 of 2003 requires that the National Health
Council formulate policy and guidelines for the development, distribution and
effective utilisation as well as the management of human resources within the
national health system. In implementing this provision of the Act, we initiated
a process of developing the human resources plan for health.
The plan we are presenting today is the outcome of a process of interaction
with various role players in the health sector over a significant period of
time. We promised you that the Department of Health was going to meticulously
develop this plan to ensure that all stakeholders who wish to give input do
indeed have sufficient opportunity to do so. We are pleased with the
overwhelming response that the Department has received during the comment
period.
Many of the good ideas and substantive inputs by stakeholders have found
their way into the plan. We are therefore confident that this is truly a
product of a wide consultation and contribution from many stakeholders.
The WHOâs toolkit for developing country human resource plans was utilised
as a major reference document in the early stages of drafting the strategic
framework for this plan. I also wish to thank the World Health Organisation
Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO) office through the Regional Director for
the comments received from his office. I believe that we have a good basis for
cooperation with WHO on human resource planning and development.
South Africa like many other low and middle income countries in the world is
faced with serious challenges in the area of human resources for health. These
challenges relate to supply and demand as well as the ability to retain health
professionals in developing countries, especially within the public sector in
our countries.
South Africa has played a significant role in ensuring that migration of
health personnel remains high on the global health agenda. While we continue to
address these issues at national level there is a need for a bilateral and
multilateral framework to guide the migration of personnel. We need to ensure
that recruitment campaigns in developed countries of the north do not undermine
our efforts in the south to have adequate supply and distribution of health
workers.
The Report being released in Zambia today acknowledges the historic nature
of an agreement we signed in 2003 with the United Kingdom (UK) to create
partnerships on health education and workforce issues and facilitate time
limited placements. Within the framework of a Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU), the World Report states that opportunities have been provided for health
professionals from one country to spend time limited education and practice
periods in the other country to the benefit of both countries.
The Report also acknowledges the role of our hospital revitalisation
programme as an intervention to improve working conditions and retain health
professionals. This programme includes infrastructural development, provision
of equipment and improvement of management capacity in our hospitals.
We are dealing with the serious challenges that exist within the health
system to make sure that health professionals remain within the health system.
We have to ensure that we improve the working conditions within the public
sector. We know that factors such as people management, facility management and
accommodation also contribute to retention of skilled health personnel within
the public health sector and in remote facilities.
Over the years our health system has had to deal with the loss of
experienced health professionals from rural to urban areas from public to
private sector and from South Africa to mainly developed countries. It is
important to note that although a concrete human resource plan for health has
not been in place, there are many interventions we have implemented to address
the challenges in the area of human resources.
The human resource plan for health provides an overall framework for all
these interventions aimed improving supply and distribution of health personnel
and providing the appropriate skill mix for provision of health services. The
plan we are presenting today is a major step towards appropriate health
workforce planning.
A number of issues are addressed in the plan. Fundamental to these is the
question of stewardship for healthcare and its implications. We address this
issue in detail and identify certain activities that the Department of Health
has to do to ensure that government firmly fulfils this responsibility.
While we cannot deny that HR planning is not ideal without a certain amount
of standardisation and benchmarking there has been a growing realisation of a
need to develop context sensitive workload indicators. This should assist in
planning more accurately for services required at the different levels of care.
As anticipated this has generated a lot of engagement and will surely lead to a
new approach to dealing with the health workload demands in our health
system.
This plan puts forward a framework that identifies guiding principles,
strategic objectives and broad activities to act as an anchor of the HR
planning. We take the view that the national plan should act as a reference
that all stakeholders should use in their planning.
The broad activities mentioned would therefore not at this stage have time
schedules attached to them. These activities relate to the areas of function of
the national and provincial Departments of Health and various role players
including health science education institutions, private health sector,
statutory councils and labour organisations. Each of these bodies is expected
to further identify sub-activities as part of implementation and attach
timeframes to these to complement national efforts to address HR
challenges.
In order for this plan to be successful in addressing HR challenges in our
country, stakeholder participation in implementation is vital. The challenges
in our national health system are spread across both the public and private
health sectors. We therefore need to harmonise our approaches using this plan
as our guide. We need to work together to address issues ranging from supply
and demand to prioritised investment as part of the Human Resource Development
Strategy (HRDS) of the country.
This plan calls upon all role players to pool together their efforts to
ensure the attainment of the goals of the South African health system. It calls
upon both the public and the private sector to work together to improve the
health care services provided to our people.
Programme Director, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to officially
launch the national human resource plan for health and to wish this conference
fruitful deliberations. This is the beginning of the process to achieve the
correct mix of human capital at the right places, doing the appropriate work,
to the benefit of our patients and communities.
Thank you.
Issued by: Ministry of Health
7 April 2006
