Voices from the Capacity Project

“We need a more balanced geographic distribution of health professionals in Rwanda,” says Bonita Baingana, who served until recently as the Rwanda Ministry of Health’s human resources for health (HRH) advisor. The country faces one of the most critical shortages of physicians and nurses in Africa, especially in rural areas. “Most health professionals prefer to work in urban areas due to many privileges that are not found in rural areas,” Baingana notes, “leaving the rural areas with few staff to care for the majority of the country’s population.”

When Baingana joined the Ministry of Health in 2005 to take up a position supported by the Capacity Project, she found that there was no consolidated source of records on public health workers. The government urgently needed a consistent, routinely updated information system to track the deployment of health professionals across the country. With Baingana’s help, the Capacity Project partnered with the Ministry of Health and Belgian Technical Cooperation to support HRH initiatives including the development of a human resources information system (HRIS) for use at the central level and at district health offices.

As part of the Capacity Project’s efforts to support the health workforce, the Project is conducting a qualitative research study in Swaziland to identify HIV-infected health workers’ barriers to care, status disclosure and remaining in the workforce—an area that is almost completely undocumented.