Afghanistan Afghan Public Health Institute Strategic Plan - ianphi

In spite of significant progress since 2003 in addressing human resource issues, a number of criticalchallenges still exist in Afghanistan in the areas of human resource (HR) development and management.“Building on Early Gains in Afghanistan’s Health, Nutrition and Population Sector” (2010, pp. 81‐82)summarized the HR challenges as “three major imbalances”:“Geographic imbalance. A disproportionately large number of health care workers are concentrated incities and periurban areas while rural areas still suffer from shortages.Gender imbalance. There is still a shortage of (qualified) female staff, especially in rural areas.Skills‐mix imbalance. There is a shortage of staff with public health, reproductive health, and child healthskills.” (pp. 81‐82)In addition, there is a high vacancy rate for health workers in the MoPH (ranging from 19‐34%)(“Building on Early Gains in Afghanistan’s Health, Nutrition and Population Sector”, 2010, p. 82). Thisvacancy rate is due to the current low salaries of many MoPH employees, which does not enable therecruitment of high quality health personnel, and the fact that many skilled health workers leftAfghanistan during its 30 years of war and have not returned. Many of those health workers who arecurrently in the system, require capacity building to upgrade them and there is a need for accreditationand enhanced professional standards.This Strategic Direction is well aligned with one of the core elements of the Afghanistan NationalDevelopment Strategy (ANDS), Facilitating Human Resource Development and includesrecommendations from the Human Resource Development Cluster of the National Priority Programs ofthe ANDS.The aim of the MoPH is to ensure that the MoPH has the right person, with the right skills, at the rightplace with the right attitude.Strategic Objective 1 (SO‐1): To develop new categories of health workers and increase the size of theworkforce in each major skill categoryPriority Interventions:Increase the number of female nurses, physiotherapists, x‐ray technicians, psycho‐social andanaesthetic nurses and other categories of staff as neededWork with the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) to increase the number of female doctors andother female mid‐level health workersCollaborate with appropriate institutions to support the development of curricula and trainingprograms for degrees in bio‐medical engineering, medical technology, environmental health andother categories of staff (as per the Human Resource Development Cluster of the NPPs of ANDS)Strategic Objective 2 (SO‐2): To enhance Professional Standards and Accredit Curricula for MajorHealth ProfessionsPriority Interventions:Ministry of Public Health Strategic Plan, 2011‐201526