Reflections on Health Workers at AIDS 2010

The main hallway at the AIDS 2010 conference is a barrage of banners, notices, and signs—yet a few things jump out and demand to be noticed. One large photo shows an erect penis with a bejeweled hand grasping its base. Posters ask, “Will you be spanked between sessions?”

These got my attention. AIDS activists are good at such tactics, and they need to be—it’s a matter of life and death.

Death and dying are what many health workers confront every day, noted Yogan Pillay of South Africa’s National Department of Health. Showing some sobering data, he pointed out that “if we don’t take care of health workers, they will not take care of patients.” And in a session on supporting health workers to deliver care, Masamine Jimba of the University of Tokyo described how the Japanese character for “busy” literally means “losing heart.”

This conference has brought to light some encouraging progress. There’s a lot to be excited about as we strive for universal access and improved HIV/AIDS services. But as Ruairi Brugha of the Global HIV/AIDS Initiatives Network emphasized, “We need health workers to deliver them.”

Mphu Ramatlapeng, Lesotho’s minister of health, urged delegates to follow her country’s example and create national strategic plans for human resources and the health system. Development partners can then support the country-owned plans already in place. Economist Jean-Paul Moatti of the University of the Mediterranean agreed. Countries should articulate HIV/AIDS initiatives that show how donors’ grants can respond to the health workforce crisis. “We need to be smart,” he exhorted. And “we need to do it fast.”

This crowd feels the urgency. The workforce shortage is “not a gap, it’s a chasm,” insisted one delegate. Sigrun Møgedal of the Global Health Workforce Alliance shared her view: “We’ve talked about this for too long. We need to find solutions.”

Looking ahead to the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in 2011, my colleagues and I joked about borrowing tactics from AIDS activists and storming the stage in an attention-grabbing demonstration. We’ll see. But to build the health workforce needed for universal access, it’s clear that as Moatti noted, we need to be smart and we need to be fast. And we need to support the world’s overburdened health workers.

Photo: Nola Bower-Smith