WHO launches tool to assist Africa in assessing health workforce supply, demand

Nairobi: The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched the Health Labour Market Analysis (HLMA) support tool to assist Africa in assessing health workforce education capacity, supply, and demand.

The tool in Beta Version 3.0 is designed to facilitate the integration of health workforce planning into labour market analysis, Xinhua news agency reported.

The WHO in 2021 developed the Health Labour Market Analysis Guidebook and trained 75 experts from 25 countries in Africa. Building on this, the WHO designed a HLMA Support Tool which offers a novel workforce planning approach to estimate the needed health workers to address the disease burden of a country or geographical areas based on the essential service packages and the professional standards of care, the UN health agency said in a statement on Monday.

The HLMA support tool allows users to identify investment requirements for health worker employment across the continent, WHO Representative in Kenya Abdourahmane Diallo said in Nairobi while opening a workshop for experts from 14 African countries on conducting an epidemiology-based health workforce assessments and projections.

The launch comes at a time when WHO member states are increasingly adopting this epidemiological approach to inform health workforce policies, strategies, and investment plans.

Diallo noted that projections suggest a potential shortfall of 6.1 million health workers in Africa by 2030, emphasizing that this shortage needs to be addressed to effectively combat the region’s disease burden through comprehensive health promotion, disease prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliation.

He also pointed out that around 27 per cent of trained health workers remain unemployed, reflecting a significant mismatch between training outcomes and job creation. “This gap requires a 43 per cent increase in current funding levels dedicated to health workforce employment,” he said.

Following the launch, the WHO plans to train about 50 international experts in the technical and practical aspects of conducting epidemiology-based health workforce assessments and projections. These experts will form a regional pool that supports the growing number of member states requesting technical assistance.

The experts will apply the tool to assist member states with health labour market analysis and will drive the generation of evidence necessary to inform health workforce investment plans and agreements.