The Seven-Billionth Person: A Global Health Workforce Perspective

Carol Bales — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 20:59:06 +0000

This post was originally published on the IntraHealth International blog.

On October 31st the world welcomed Danica in the Philippines, Nargis in India, and numerous other babies who symbolize the seven-billionth person on our planet. It’s a timely moment to shine some light on the implications of population growth for the health and well-being of all our children and the generations to come.

Here’s the crux: the global shortage of health workers translates to an estimated billion people with no access to essential health services, according to a 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) report. So exactly how many health workers do we need to address this problem? The WHO has determined that 2.3 doctors, nurses, and midwives per 1,000 people is the minimum threshold needed to cover the population with essential health services. This is commonly referred to as the health worker density ratio.

Now here’s where the issue of population growth comes in. Planning and policy efforts to improve the health worker density ratio have focused on increasing the ratio’s numerator (health workers). Makes sense, right? But they’ve largely ignored the ratio’s denominator (population size).

Author's name:

Sara Pacqué-Margolis and Sarah Dwyer

Publication Date:

November 2011

Population Growth

The Seven-Billionth Person: A Global Health Workforce Perspective