New Report: Scaling Up Human Resources for Health in Tanzania

A new report by I-TECH details challenges affecting enrollment at 12 pre-service health care training institutions in Tanzania, and outlines strengths and possible areas for further focus. The report, Scaling Up Human Resources for Health, was commissioned by the Tanzania Ministry of Health and Social Welfare and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A PDF of the full report is now available for download (report PDF, 3.8MB). An executive summary is also available. (summary PDF, 400KB).

Background

As in many resource-limited countries, leaders in Tanzania are working to increase the number of health care workers available to respond to the needs of the country's people. To that end, the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) has asked all health training institutions in Tanzania to increase their enrollment by 100 percent. Mid-level cadres, such as clinical officers (CO), clinical assistants (CA), and enrolled nurses (EN), are key target groups, because of their importance to primary health care services.

To help with these efforts, I-TECH is providing technical assistance, with funding from the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Much of this work focuses on strategies to meet the MOHSW’s goals for scaling up student enrollment in health care worker training programs. However, in order to recommend specific, functional strategies for increasing enrollment, leaders need further data on the current barriers and opportunities to scaling up enrollment at existing pre-service health training institutions.

To help provide this data, I-TECH Tanzania recently conducted an in-depth assessment to provide institution-specific data on the 12 public CO and CA institutions in Tanzania, in order to assist the MOHSW in determining the most effective way to increase the output of this cadre of health care workers. At the conclusion of this work, the team designed and produced the report, Scaling Up Human Resources for Health (PDF, 3.8MB), to detail their findings.

In the report, the team identifies potential barriers to increasing enrollment at any institution. In addition, the authors profile the 12 institutions in depth, and provide specific recommendations and findings for each.