Malawi

This study was carried out to document the current situation regarding continued or in-service training opportunities amongst healthcare workers serving in government (public) health centres within Blantyre District Health office. Knowledge of such a situation would better inform health personnel trainers, professional regulatory bodies, the Ministry of Health and international agencies to design appropriate intervention programs towards professional development of healthcare personnel. [from introduction]

This paper examines the employment preferences of public sector registered nurses working in Malawi and identifies the range and relative importance of the factors that affect their motivation. The research was designed in the light of the Malawi government’s programme to address the shortage of health workers, which is based on salary top-ups as a means of increasing employee motivation and reducing high rates of attrition. This policy has been adopted despite relatively little quantitative exploration into the employment preferences of health workers in developing countries. This study aims to provide a clearer picture of the preferences of registered nurses about different aspects of their employment, and the factors that might persuade them to continue in the profession within their home country.

This paper focuses on the scheme by the Malawi Ministry of Health (MOH) to retain nurse tutors in collaboration with the Christian Health Association of Malawi (CHAM). It chronicles the scheme’s successful elements for purposes of eventual replication, suggests how to address some of the challenges and identifies effective incentives, including salary supplements. [from executive summary]

The present report deals with health financing issues in Malawi and analyzes trends in health expenditures in the 1990s, along with the prospects for improving resource mobilization, allocation and use in the health sector of that country. This review highlights the need to further prioritize the activities under the Malawi National Health Plan so that the plan will be a basis for government policy and budgetary commitments and also an instrument to marshal and orchestrate donor support to the sector. [from foreword]

This Praxis Note provides an overview of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the Malawi health care system and on the organisational capacity of Mulanje Mission Hospital. It describes the experiences and lessons learnt from a capacity building program designed to address capacity deficits and erosion caused by HIV/AIDS attrition. Less emphasis was placed on external training courses and increasing attention given to short-course inputs and distance learning. [from introduction]

What effect does the increased number of Malawians living with HIV/AIDS have on the public health sector? To address this question, the Commonwealth Regional Health Community Secretariat (CRHCS) and Malawian researchers from the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau for Africa, undertook an assessment to explore the effects of HIV/AIDS on the health workforce. [author’s description]

Malawi has a critical human resources problem particularly in the health sector. The College of Medicine (COM)is the only medical school. For senior staff it heavily depends on expatriates. We explore to what extent a brain drain took place among the COM graduates by investigating their professional development and geographical distribution.

This document presents estimates of the number and proportion of children who will lose one or both parents in 23 countries heavily affected by HIV/AIDS. The report also presents the view that solutions can be found only through coordinated efforts to support, strengthen, and multiply coping strategies among the families and communities on the front lines of the pandemic. The COPE (Community-based Options for Protection and Empowerment) program is a promising example of how this can be done. Human resources challenges are also addressed. [adapted from author]

Two crises dominate the health sectors of sub-Saharan African countries: those of human resources and of HIV. There is considerable variation in the extent to which these two phenomena affect sub-Saharan countries, with a few facing extreme levels of both. This paper reviews the continent-wide situation with respect to this double burden before considering the case of Malawi in more detail. [from abstract]

The medical brain drain has been described as rich countries looting doctors and nurses from developing countries undermining their health systems and public health. However this brain-drain might also be seen as a success in the training and export of health professionals and the benefits this provides. This paper illustrates the arguments and possible policy options by focusing on the situation in one of the poorest countries in the world, Malawi. [author’s description]

The main objective of this study was to assess the role of traditional birth attendants and the quality of their services in contributing to the reduction of maternal deaths in Malawi. [from abstract]

The main aim of the study was to estimate how much clinician-time that malaria exacts on Malawi’s Ministry of Health resources. It estimates the proportion of finances that anti-malarial medications exact on the country’s health budget and determines whether the Malawi public health sector had adequate human resources to provide treatment. [adapted from author]

Using the training needs projection methods in the Spectrum Policy Modeling System software module ProTrain

The migration of health professionals trained in Africa to developed nations has compromised health systems in the African region. The financial losses from the investment in training due to the migration from the developing nations are hardly known. Developing countries are losing significant amounts of money through lost investment of health care professionals who emigrate. There is need to quantify the amount of remittances that developing nations get in return from those who migrate. [from abstract]

This document intends to provide a policy and strategic framework for management of health information, use of information in planning and management of health services and monitoring health sector performance. [from preface]

This report focuses on the impact of human resource shortages witnessed by MSF teams in four southern African countries - Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, and South Africa. While the focus is largely on nurses in rural areas, it should be acknowledged that health staff is lacking across the spectrum - from doctors to laboratory technicians to pharmacists - at all levels of care. In all these cases the need for access to ART, as well as other health needs, is outstripping human resource capacity. [from introduction]

This paper discusses the implications for health personnel of the HIV epidemic, and health sector responses to it, in southern Africa, using Malawi as a case study. Published and grey literature has been consulted to assess the situation and its implications for equity. [author’s description]

The migration of health professionals from southern Africa to developed nations is negatively affecting the delivery of health care services in the source countries. Oftentimes however, it is the reasons for the out-migration that have been described in the literature. The work and domestic situations of those health professionals continuing to serve in their posts have not been adequately studied. The present study utilized a qualitative data collection and analysis method. This was achieved through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with health professionals and administrators to determine the challenges they face and the coping systems they resort to and the perceptions towards those coping methods. [author’s description]

The overall objective of this paper is to provide some insights into the effects of the HIV epidemic on human capital in sub-Saharan Africa through a discussion of some of the factors that are operating. It is not intended as a compendium of data on the problem but aims instead to provide an analytical framework for understanding the policy and programming issues. There is an analysis of the impact on the public services in Malawi, a detailed presentation of the impact on education and health and a discussion of issues relating to the measurement of the impact on different productive sectors and the role of different social partners in adjusting to, and managing, the impact.

Twelve percent of the adult population in Malawi is estimated to be HIV infected and 15% to 20% of these are in need of life saving antiretroviral therapy. Using data on the total number of patients on highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) and estimates of the number of health professionals required to deliver HAART, researchers set out to determine the human resources requirements for HAART scale-up in Malawi. Results show that the human resources requirements are significant and that Malawi is using far fewer human resources than would be expected based on past studies. [adapted

This report presents the finding from an study to determine the impact of HIV/AIDS on the public sector in Malawi. Section E, 3 establishes the impacts of HIV/AIDS on the Ministry of Health and Population and on health workers including statistics of attrition by occupational category in the health sector, morbidity and absenteesim, vacancy levels. It also analyzes effect on health worker workload, discusses the impact on productivity and performance, the financial implications, impact on service provision, and institutional vulnurability to HIV/AIDS.

This presentation was part of the ECSA Regional Health Ministers’ Conference. It describes an HIV/AIDS impact assessment done in Malawi and gives the detailed findings of the study.


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In the space of just a few years, close to 300,000 people with HIV have been put onto ART in Ethiopia and Malawi

HRH policy decision making requires good quality and adequate baseline census data and information on current availability, profiles, and distribution of HRH. Such data is crucial to compute indicators necessary to guide, accelerate, improve and target program and policy development at the national level. Regularly updating such data allows countries to determine whether HRH benchmarks are being achieved, and whether policies and programs designed at the country and sub-national level are indeed working. [author’s description]


This document was presented at the ECSA Workforce Observato

This presentation was part of the International Conference on Global Health session, “Answering the Call: Innovations in Human Resources by African Faith-Based Organizations.” It introduces the Christian Health Association of Malawi and talks about the organizations effort in HR, recruitement strategies - including the impact and challenges of their strategy.

This report evaluates the success of a program to improve family planning services in Malawi. It discusses the importance of community-based distribution, i.e. mobile clinics and community health workers, to the success of family planning in the country since so much of the population is rural.

This Zip file package consists of 5 Word and 1 Excel files: Reaching an EHP Implementation Plan; Revised Contents and Costing; Annex 1: Details of Interventions; Annex 2: Additional Detail on the Costing of the EHP; Annex 3: Summary of February 2002 Dissemination Meetings; and EHP Cost Model, May 2002. The EHP (Essential Health Package) Objectives are to contribute to reduced poverty in Malawi, to increase the efficiency of publicly funded health services, to improve equity of access to health services, and to serve as a tool for priority setting and as a basis for a Sector Wide Approach. The content builds on the concept of a well-functioning district health system, with a strengthened community level component.

WHO, World Bank, and other human resources for health experts globally have recognized the dearth of human resource data for the health sector in many developing countries. In the present assessment, JHPIEGO reviewed the availability of staff deployment and training data from routine information systems in Malawi to inform the Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) of deficiencies that would need to be addressed in order to better inform the development and ongoing monitoring of deployment and training policies and plans.
[publisher’s description]

Malawi’s health human resources initiatives since the late 1990s provide a good example of a comprehensive national scale-up plan for the health workforce. Its Emergency Human Resources Plan has shown modest but promising results. Health worker attrition remains high and tutor supply low, but training capacity has been substantially expanded and Malawi is expected to begin meeting training output targets in 2008. [from introduction]

This presentation was part of the Planning, Developing and Supporting the Health Workforce: Human Resources for Health Action Workshop. It briefly discusses the background and some issues for consideration about Malawi’s plan to retain and recruit health workers.


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