When Susan Alio describes what she likes best about her job, a smile spreads across her face and her eyes light up. “When mothers come,” she says softly and swiftly, “and they have a normal birth, they go with their babies, healthy, without any complication, that one gives me joy.” She’s perfectly poised in her crisp white uniform and cap.
Susan obviously loves her job as a midwife at Naguru Hospital in Kampala, Uganda, but it’s not easy. She feels the effects of the global shortage of health workers firsthand, on a daily basis. When she’s asked about her challenges, her big smile fades and her words slow down. “My biggest challenge is usually not enough staffs on the station, because you end up being stretched, and then when you’re stretched you’re not able to deliver at your best,” she explains. Read more »
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In recent years, heightened attention has been given to scaling up the production of health workers in response to the global human resources for health (HRH) crisis. While many countries face absolute health worker shortages and need to increase their availability, the HRH crisis is not just a supply problem. 
Last week, the 
Bernard Tayebwa
Maureen Kanyiginya
The world currently has a shortage of some 4 million health workers. This shortage is amplified by a complete mismatch between where health workers are stationed and where they are most needed. The healthier and wealthier a community is, the more health workers it has. The poorer and sicker a community, the fewer health workers it has. The situation is worsening as every year hundreds of thousands of health workers move from poor, rural, and underserved communities to wealthier, metropolitan communities with a surfeit of health workers. This occurs both within countries (a nurse moving from a rural area to the capital city) and between countries (a doctor moving from a developing country to a wealthy country). 
m standards rooted in the Geneva Conventions to protect health facilities, health workers, and the patients served during armed conflict, and to enable health professionals to act consistently with their ethical obligations, assaults on and interference with health functions are all too common in war. Aside from the human toll they take, these attacks often compromise the ability to deliver care to populations in great need, impede efforts to reconstruct health systems after war, and lead to the flight of health workers whose presence in a time of great social stress is essential.
It was a great opportunity for me to sit among hundreds of human resources professionals from Kenya and the East Africa region during the recent 16th National human resources management forum organized by the Kenya Institute of Human Resource Management (IHRM) in Nairobi. The forum was graced with highly experienced and resourceful facilitators from different sectors and it was very exciting to learn from their experiences, successes, and challenges. 
