Human Resources for Health Country Profile Malawi
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Date
2010-12-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Malawi Government
Abstract
The Human Resource for Health (HRH) Malawi Country Profile is to serve as a tool for providing a comprehensive picture of the health workforce situation in Malawi. This has been achieved through the presentation of the current situation regarding health policies and management systems, the human resources management information system (HRMIS); and by providing the picture of previous and current stock of health workers in the country as a basis for baseline information on prevailing trends. The profile will therefore facilitate information sharing nationally and also for cross-country comparisons, especially in the Sub Saharan Africa, and contribute towards producing regional HRH country profiles.
The task of updating the HRH Malawi Profile was basically a cross-sectional desk study that adopted descriptive and analytical methodologies where both qualitative and quantitative data and information were compiled from available reports, studies and statistics related to HRH from public and private health sector stakeholders. Personal consultations, telephone interviews and field visits were also conducted with identified representatives from different stakeholders to fill in the HRH information gaps.
The establishment of a National HRH Observatory is currently strongly recommended to facilitate production, sharing and use of quantitative and qualitative information on HRH in order to support the development and implementation of the future HRH policies and plans. In future, one of the main activities of the National HRH Malawi Observatory will be to periodically update the HRH country profile. The current exercise of up-dating the HRH Malawi Country Profile is therefore a stop-gap measure in order to present a situational picture of the HRH in Malawi and facilitate a reasonable comparison of the HRH challenges and policy responses in Malawi with those of other countries in the region.
Since Malawi is still in the process of developing and establishing the proposed National HRH Observatory, some of the data and information were not readily available to fill all HRH gaps. However, a few important consultations with experienced professionals well versed with HRH issues and the HMIS, from the Central Monitoring and Evaluation Division (CMED), were done to provide realistic estimates to fill such gaps. These estimations were validated either by important HRH peers in the HRTWG or from key personnel from the MoH and the health sector fraternity in the country.