Countries

To enable World Bank countries to progress beyond HRH policy dialogue and planning into effective action, the World Bank's HRH program is providing strategic HRH investment and assistance to specific countries in Africa. The primary countries of focus are Zambia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana, although select support to other countries in the region is also given on request. The underlying objective is to assist these governments to carry out country owned initiatives and enable them to develop and implement their HRH strategies, policies and programs, to reverse the shortage, mal-distribution, and low productivity of health personnel in their countries. All work is intended to complement country specific efforts and is tightly coordinated with governments, donors and other stakeholders. Broadly, although the program components are heavily tailored to the needs and demands of each focus country government (see individual country links), specific components include the following:

Diagnose country need, phase, and actors within the HRH reform cycle: This includes dialogue and/or country level workshops in the focus country to determine the phase of countries within the HRH reform cycle (inactive, data collection, problem diagnosis, planning, implementation), and determine specific areas of assistance. Such visits and workshops also help identify roles of partner agencies and help build alliances to avoid duplication of efforts and ensure conhesion.

Assist governments to obtain analysis and baseline information on HRH: This includes producing analytical studies to obtain key baseline analysis and data required for policy and program design on HRH, such as information on health worker stock, distribution, productivity, production and motivation. Such studies are carried out depending on demand and need, and are tailored to specific country contexts and needs. In some countries, this includes assisting governments to conduct their own ongoing studies, and providing technical assistance such as the design of necessary tools and strategies for policies, the design of databases and questionnaires.

Assist in the development of national HRH strategic plans, policies and programs: This involves assisting governments design and/or updatenational strategies/plans and respective policies and programs , taking into consideration some of the new evidence and baseline information obtained. This includes working closely with governments in question, and helping to create costed prioritized plans (and appropriate interventions) with parts that can be implemented with the governments current budget and parts that can be implemented as new funding becomes available.

Build government capacity to implement national HRH strategic plans, policies and programs on HRH: This includes building capacity to manage information and data flow required to develop and monitor programs and policies on HRH, develop mechanisms to enter and update data accordingly, operate databases to strengthen program stewardship and oversight, strengthen production of health workers, as well as to implement policies and programs on HRH.