Annual Report of the Department of Health 2010 - Unrwa

Table 53 - Health staff as at end of December 2010
Area Staff HQ Jordan Lebanon Syria Gaza Strip West Bank* Agency
Medical care services
Doctors** 4 101 56 60 150 99 470
Pharmacists 1 2 2 1 4 2 12
Dental Surgeons 0 30 19 19 30 26 124
Nurses 0 265 119 135 294 296 1,109
Paramedical*** 1 130 28 75 149 198 581
Admin./Support Sta 6 89 47 39 118 90 389
Labour category 0 100 53 65 122 86 426
Sub-total 12 717 324 394 867 797 3,111
Environmental health services
Engineers 0 1 0 0 0 1 14
Admin/Support Sta 0 29 0 0 0 23 96
Labour category 0 296 0 0 0 190 1,482
Sub-total 0 326 0 0 0 214 1,592
Internaonal 2 0 1 0 0 0 3
Grand total 14 1043 325 394 867 1,011 3,654
*Including staff of Qalqilia hospital; **Including senior managerial staff, specialists and school medical officer; *** Including laboratory technicians, Asst.
pharmacists, X-Ray technicians and dental hygienists; Environmental health services staff in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza Strip are no more under health
department. In Jordan the decision was taken to handle this programme to the Procurement and Logistics Department
HUMAN RESOURCES
During 2010, 3,654 staff members (all categories) provided comprehensive health services to the registered Palestine refugee population
utilizing UNRWA services in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The services comprised preventive and curative medical
care, environmental health services in camps and supplementary feeding to nutritionally vulnerable groups.
The staff to population ratios in 2010 continued to be very low compared to national and regional standards, even if calculated based on
served population, and not on the total number of registered refugees.
Coupled with high utilization rates, the low staff and population ratios continued to be the reason for the heavy workloads at UNRWA’s
primary health care facilities. One of the major objectives of the Medium Term Plan is to reduce excessive workloads by recruiting additional
staff and improving access to basic health services through expansion and upgrading of Primary Health Care facilities. However, achieving
these objectives depends on the level of funding the Agency receives in the future. Moreover chronic difficulties in the recruitment and
retention of staff, both at the managerial and professional levels, have continued to hamper efforts to maintain the number of qualified
human resources in the Health Programme. This is partially due to the low pay scales in UNRWA and the lack of career planning
programmes in the past ten years, owing to the discontinuation of external support for the Agency’s post-graduate fellowship programme.
In spite of regular training to upgrade the skills and capabilities of staff, it has become increasingly difficult to preserve the investment in
staff training, and unless additional resources become available to the Programme, the UNRWA health system will suffer, loosing
well-trained health care workers.
The Health programme is currently investigating alternative strategies to improve the efficiency of health delivery with present resources
through external evaluations and targeted operational research.
Table 54 – UNRWA staff p er 100,000 served population
Jordan Lebanon Syria Gaza Strip West Bank Agency
Physicians 9.6 21.5 14.4 14.9 20.9 14.7
Nurses 25.2 48.5 32.6 29.3 62.7 34.7
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