PHR Action Center
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Ask Your Representative to Support the African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007
In sub-Saharan Africa, people are dying of treatable and preventable diseases simply because there are not enough doctors, nurses, and community health workers to treat them. The African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 would be the first piece of legislation in the House of Representatives to address Africa's health workforce crisis, a central obstacle to scaling up essential health services and meeting global health commitments, including for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and maternal and child health. The Senate version, the Durbin Bill, recently cleared a committee and awaits a vote on the floor.
A list of recent co-sponsors is on the Library of Congress website. If you don't know who your Representitive is, you can use the elected official look-up page to find out. Please personalize the beginning of your message by telling a personal story or why this issue is important to you. For any questions about this action or composing your letter, please contact, Jirair Ratevosian at 617-301-4214 or healthactionaids@phrusa.org.
Dear [ Decision Maker ] , Continued advances in the US fight against global AIDS cannot be won without strong investments in health systems and health workers. The African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 (H.R. 3812) is the first piece of legislation to directly address the massive shortage of health workers in sub-Saharan Africa. The bill would authorize $600 million over three years to train new doctors and nurses in Africa and give them incentives to stay in their home countries to fight the AIDS pandemic and address other pressing health issues. Please do everything you can to ensure this landmark legislation becomes law. If you have not already, please co-sponsor the bill. If you have already co-sponsored the bill, please urge your colleagues to support the bill and do everything you can to ensure its swift passage. The African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 (HR 3812) would provide $150 million in FY 2008, $200 million in FY 2009, and $250 million in FY 2010 to pay for safer working conditions, training and recruitment of health workers (especially in underserved rural areas) and better health systems management. The World Health Organization estimates that sub-Saharan Africa is suffering a shortage of more than 800,000 doctors, nurses, and midwives, and an overall shortfall of nearly 1.5 million health workers of all kinds. The problem is crippling health care in many African countries. In Uganda, hospitals have shut down for lack of a single health worker to care for patients, and in some areas a single doctor or nurse may be on call 24 hours a day and seven days per week to care for hundreds of extremely ill patients every week. In Ethiopia, there are only 2,000 doctors for 75 million people; this is comparable to 16 doctors in all of Washington DC coping with simultaneous pandemics of AIDS, TB and malaria killing hundreds of people every day. In fact, there are more than 4,000 doctors in Washington, DC to care for its 600,000 people. The causes of the shortage are complex, and include HIV/AIDS, poor working conditions, insufficient capacity to train new health workers, the overall lack of funding for health, ceilings on government wage legislation, and the brain drain of health workers to countries like the United States, which need to do more to address their own health worker shortages. A task force of the WHO and Harvard, the Joint Learning Initiative, estimated $8 billion over five years is needed to double the health workforce in sub-Saharan Africa. Strengthening the health workforce in Africa will bring enormous health benefits to millions of people and save untold numbers of lives. Please make passage of the African Health Capacity Investment Act of 2007 (HR 3812) one of your priorities.
Thank you. |
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The World Health Organization has identified 57 countries, including 36 in Africa, where the current level of health workers makes it "very unlikely" that they will achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals, internationally agreed upon goals on reversing the spread of AIDS, malaria and other major diseases and significantly reducing child and maternal mortality. A recent estimate of the funds needed to double the health workforce in sub-Saharan Africa placed the cost at an additional $2 billion in the first year, and more in ensuing years.
In Africa, people are dying unnecessarily because there are simply not enough health care workers. Health workers--nurses, doctors, pharmacists, community health workers, laboratory technicians, physician assistants, nurse assistants, mental health workers, managers, and many more—are at the core of health systems everywhere, diagnosing and treating diseases, educating and caring for patients and developing and implementing policies and strategies to combat disease. But in sub-Saharan Africa, a mere 3% of the world’s health workers struggle against all odds to treat 14% of the world's population and combat 24% of the global disease burden. The World Health Organization estimates that sub-Saharan Africa is suffering a shortage of more than 800,000 doctors, nurses and midwives and an overall shortfall of nearly 1.5 million health workers.
The causes of the shortage of health workers include HIV/AIDS, which is decimating much of the continent’s workforce. In South Africa, it is conservatively estimated that 16% of the existing health workforce are HIV+, and Malawi’s government assumes they will lose 3% of their health workforce each year to the disease. Further, there is a lack of sufficient and relevant training capacity to produce the number of health workers required; an inability to retain health workers due to poor working conditions and lack of funding for adequate salaries, sometimes due to wage caps influenced by the International Monetary Fund; and brain drain, the large-scale emigration of health care workers seeking better paying and more secure jobs in countries with greater resources, such as the United States, England and Canada.
Smart investments can expand Africa’s health workforce and ensure that the health workers have the information, medicines, and equipment they need to maintain and restore their patients’ health. Investments are needed to expand the capacity of health training institutions, provide incentives for health workers to serve in rural areas and to remain in the country, provide health workers living wages, improve health workforce management, create safe working conditions and give health workers the tools they need to do their jobs.
If the international community is committed to reaching universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care, and to significantly reducing maternal and child death, governments must show leadership in addressing the health workforce crisis. Today, you can be part of the solution.
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