The government is working to redraft its policy to allow the direct employment of health workers to curb the existing staff shortage unlike the current situation where they have to apply for the vacancies.
Based on the current data, Tanzania lacks more than half of the required health staff, a situation that is said to contribute to preventable deaths.
Speaking at the presentation of the Human Resources for Health report yesterday, the director for Human Resource Development from the ministry of Health, Dr Otilia Gowelle, said Tanzania has only 70, 124 health workers out of the 145, 454 required.
She, however, said the problem was not about the low training capacity but the fact that most of the graduates did not turn out for employment.
“Waiting for the graduates to apply to work for us gives an escape for some of them who towards the end of their studies realise that the profession does not pay well. Instead, they join other sectors even though we have enough openings for them.
So, with the revised policy we will offer direct posts for all medical cadres. The government also orders the council to create an attractive environment for the new employees and for the retention of the existing ones,” said Dr Gowelle.
She added that the medical profession was the most affected because apart from most of the graduates not turning up to practice, the training capacity remained low.
Dr Gowelle also said Tanzania was still far behind from meeting the international standard of the doctor patient ratio which requires 23 doctors for a population of 10, 000 people. But the national standard is 7.75 doctors for a population of 10, 000 people.
The human resource for health development project that started in 2010 was supported by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) but will come to an end effective next month.
Dr Gowelle said the government had learnt of the areas of improvement but the system in general had been of great help especially in collecting staff information and distribution of workers based on the area of demand.
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