Afghanistan

Although misconceptions about family planning and cultural factors such as son preference presented some obstacles to progress, [two MSH] projects found that religion in Afghanistan is not a barrier to expanding family planning services. It was critical to engage clinicians and communities in culturally sensitive ways. Emphasizing the use of birth spacing to protect the health of mothers and children was especially effective. Activities to empower women—including a health-oriented literacy program—and increase the number of female community workers supported rapid scale-up of contraceptive use.

This paper examines the experience with using various incentives to motivate and retain community health workers (CHWs) serving primarily as volunteers in child health and nutrition programs in developing countries.

This paper seeks to elucidate HRH issues in the critical startup period of reconstruction in countries that have experienced relatively prolonged and major conflict. The examples are drawn mostly from Afghanistan and Cambodia, two countries that experienced more than twenty years of conflict. [from author]

The main objective of the Ministry of Health (MOH) certification program, which will be called the Health Worker Certification System (HWCS), is to achieve a standard level of quality provided by all health workers. To achieve this level of quality it is critical that the skills of each health worker by certified through a competency-based test. This system of testing will require that all training of health workers in the future be focused on combining knowledge acquisition with hands-on competency based skills, rather than just didactic training. Refresher training and recertification will also be required in order to ensure a basic level of quality.

The goal of the human resources development policy is to ensure availability of suitably qualified appropriately skilled and motivated human resource for health at appropriate geographic level of pre-defined disciplines, for provision of essential health services of acceptable quality at affordable cost to the community. [author’s description]

Women health workers have been vital in improving the health of women and children in Pakistan. Inspired by its neighbor’s experience, Afghanistan is embarking on a similar program to encourage women to work in the health sector. [author’s description]

This study analyzed and compared the knowledge base of trained community health workers with that of doctors and nurses in Afghanistan to determine the differences in their abilities to provide healthcare and health information to patients.