The government must strengthen its governance, stewardship, and financing structures to ensure that the training, recruitment and retention of the country’s health workforce is informed by the health needs of Ugandans. The country’s resources must also be channeled to training priority cadres for the country’s health system as well as ensure that they are absorbed into the labour market to guarantee quality service delivery in Uganda. These were some of the recommendations at a two-day policy dialogue held at the Serena Kampala Hotel on June 27-28 by the Ministry of Health in conjunction with the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The dialogue held under the theme: “Investing in and Optimising health workforce to achieve Sustainable Development Goals” attracted policymakers, health planners and partners. It followed an analysis of the findings from a health labour market study which was undertaken in 2023 by the Ministry of Health with support from WHO to understand better the human resources for health dynamics in Uganda. Among the study’s objectives was the need to understand the willingness of the young generation in joining the health workforce, the capacity of the health training institutions to meet the demand for training, the stock of the available health workforce for service delivery, the migration and the distribution of this health workforce and the government’s ability to pay for recruitment of more health workers.
The study notes that an adequate num.