Health Sector Reform and Deployment, Training and Motivation of Human Resources towards Equity in Health Care: Issues and Concerns in Ghana

Ghana, a low income developing country, is undergoing health sector reforms aimed at achieving greater equity of access to services, improved efficiencies in resource utilization, development of wider linkages with communities and other partners, as well as improved quality of health services. These reforms have strong influences on, and are influenced by, issues of human resources development, deployment and motivation. Some of the human resources issues debated under the reforms include issues of distribution of personnel, reprofiling of staff types and skill mixes including delegation of some essential skills. Issues of gender influence on staff distribution, as well as social and geographical factors, affect human resources deployment to meet the health sector reform goals. Health workers in Ghana have severe distribution differentials in terms of geography as well as between tertiary and primary care sites. Efforts at redress include developing multi-purpose health workers, delegation of certain life saving skills to midwives, schemes to improve personnel administration systems and provision of new incentive mechanisms. [abstract]