Modernisation, gender disparities and staff shortages in spotlight at health conference

Health minister Joe Phaahla has called for medical regulators in Africa, including the Health Professions Council of SA (HPCSA) to quickly move with the times and be responsive to the ever-changing healthcare needs of a modern society, including technological advances in medicine.

Addressing the 24th Association of Medical Councils of Africa (AMCOA) conference, which has brought together health regulators, policymakers and academics from the continent , Phaahla expressed concern about the slowness of regulators in dealing with a brain drain, skills shortage and the increasing use of technology in delivering healthcare services.

“Regulatory frameworks need to be made nimbler, agile, and responsive to meet the needs of modern society. This is also true in the regulation of scopes of practice as modern team-based care and technological advances are increasingly transforming health professional work.

“Despite the nexus between modernising regulation and optimising the health workforce, there is still a gap in knowledge around the impact of different regulatory models on health professional scopes of practice in Africa and globally. Therefore, this conference needs to reflect on the kind of regulatory mechanisms needed for the scopes of practice to deliver health services in our modern societies,” he said.

The four-day conference, which is being held at Sun City from Sunday to Wednesday, is set to discuss, among other topics, health workforce wellness, distribution of the health workforce to deliver universal healthcare, reforming of education for the future and the use of digital technology in healthcare.

Phaahla described the “crisis in human resources in the healthcare sector as one of the most pressing global healthcare issues of our time”.

While healthcare workers in rural areas aspire for city life due to better working conditions, those already in urban areas are leaving the public sector for the private sector.

“Finally, these professionals and their colleagues in the public sector eventually emigrate to more developed countries to obtain greater pay, better working conditions, an overall better quality of life and improved opportunities.”

The reality though is that global undersupply of these healthcare workers threatens the quality and sustainability of health systems, particularly in Africa.

“This undersupply is concurrent with globalisation and the resulting liberalisation of markets, which allow healthcare workers to offer their services in countries other than those of their origin. It is important to remind ourselves that migration to greener pastures, particularly in the case of professionals with exportable skills, has always occurred and will continue to do so.”

Phaahla said there is a need to develop effective policies to address human resource needs.

While the shortage of healthcare workers is more complex and is driven by suboptimal working conditions, Phaahla called for health industry players to look into pervasive inequalities in the workforce, particularly the bias against women, young people and those living with disabilities. Despite being the majority of the health workforce, women are often overlooked and poorly paid compared to men.

“We need to recognise the importance of gender dynamics in this sector. Women constitute 67% of the health care workforce globally. We are aware that women still encounter gender issues such as occupational segregation, pay inequality and underrepresentation in leadership and decision‐making in many countries.”

The informal and unpaid health and care workforce, including community health workers and home‐based caregivers, who are also predominantly women, are profoundly affected by health and workforce challenges, including “social protection, working conditions and safety”.

“Therefore, future human resources for health and its regulations should systematically address issues such as wage disparities, occupational discrimination, and other forms of discrimination. We expect this conference to reflect on these complex matters [and] come up with practical recommendations for the regulation of medical practice in order for us to be better prepared to confront the future of the health workforce and its regulation.”

TIMESLIVE