Support for Communities
A knowledgeable, skilled and motivated health workforce is critical for reaching universal health coverage. Health workforce includes those that provide health services such as doctors, nurses physician assistants, clinical officers, clinical associates, medical assistants, etc. and those that support the health services such as hospital managers, ambulance drivers etc. Skilled health workers are unable to deliver services effectively without appropriate physical capital such as adequate facilities, equipment and consumables such as medicines. Thus health system budgets need to balance these three vital demands – human resources, physical capital and consumables.
WHO is supporting countries in achieving national and international goals to strengthen their health workforce and find sustainable solutions to health workforce issues as the education, migration and retention of health workers , supporting Member States in governance and health workforce planning and to produce information for policy makers to take evidence based decisions- so as to contribute towards the attainment of the highest possible level of health.
Adapted from the WHO: https://www.who.int/healthsystems/topics/workforce/en/