Year: 2009
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: Introduction: Globally, there is a lack of human resources for health.This is even more acute during emergencies where harsh conditions make recruitment and retention of trained staff more difficult.A promising strategy to ameliorate this lack of human resources is "task-shifting", or the shifting of certain health tasks to trained paramedical staff, community health workers or expert patients.Task-shifting has been implemented successfully in HIV and child health programs.Anecdotal evidence indicates that humanitarian health agencies also use task-shifting, but the extent of its use, its success, and obstacles to its use remain unclear.Methods: An online international survey of humanitarian heath professionals regarding their knowledge, attitudes, and practices toward task-shifting was drafted.An assessment of barriers to the implementation of successful task-shifting efforts within humanitarian health programs was conducted.Results: There are no published data on the use of "taskshifting" as a human resources for health strategy in humanitarian agencies.The survey results still are pending.Conclusions: Humanitarian agencies informally use "taskshifting" as a health strategy for human resources.Few organizations have dedicated policies to officially allow this practice or for procedures to formally train and supervise non-medical staff performing these tasks.Instituting such policies will permit agencies to increase their available pool of practitioners rapidly, and transition their programs to post-emergency development by increasing local capacity for health response.A minimum package for implementation of this strategy will be discussed.
Authors: Hani Mowafi, Seble Frehywot
Institutions: Boston University, George Washington University
Language: English
Subfield: Emergency Medical Services
Field: Health Professions
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3205070837