The Decade for Health Workforce Strengthening in the SEA Region 2015–2024: Second review of progress, challenges, capacities and opportunities

Abstract

In 2014, Member States of the WHO South-East Asia (‎SEA)‎ Region agreed to the “Decade for Strengthening Human Resources for Health in SEA Region 2015–2024”. The WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia endorsed resolution SEA/RC67/R6 on “Strengthening Health Workforce Education and Training in the Region” the same year. This requested the Regional Director to report on progress in health workforce development to the Regional Committee for South-East Asia every two years, starting in 2016, for a decade. The second review of progress in 2018 involved (‎a)‎ reporting by Member States on 14 indicators, and (‎b)‎ a regional meeting to review progress, challenges and opportunities. The High-Level Preparatory Meeting (‎HLP)‎ held in the WHO Regional Office in New Delhi from 30 July–2 August 2018 reviewed the attached Working Paper and strongly supported its conclusions. It gave additional emphasis to some of the conclusions, and made the following recommendations. Actions by Member States  Continue efforts to improve rural retention and transformative education, and document and share experiences of the impact of such efforts on health worker performance and access to care.  Improve the collection and analysis of data on HRH with a focus on frontline health workers.  Improve the coordination of HRH functions between different departments within the ministries of health as well as in other ministries. Actions by WHO  Support the evaluation of best practices in the SEA Region in key areas such as improving rural retention and providing transformative education.  Help build the capacity of policy-makers in the SEA Region in HRH policy analysis, strategy development and other aspects of HRH governance, through the development of regional training courses, strengthening of HRH units, intercountry exchanges of experience, and other relevant approaches.Support countries of the Region in strengthening the collection and analysis of HRH data with special emphasis on frontline health workers. This Working Paper and the HLP Meeting recommendations are submitted to the Seventy-first Session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia for its consideration and decision.