Improving SA Health System Top Priority

If developing countries want to succeed in improving their health systems, they urgently need to decentralise them and shift tasks from doctors to nurses and community health workers, said experts at the Fifth International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Cape Town.

Recommendations have been made at the conference, including; scaling up the numbers of healthcare workers to improve health systems. Shortage of skills and human resources has been lamented in Africa for many years, especially since qualified health personnel has been leaving in large numbers to work in developed countries for better pay.
 
Another way to make health systems achieve more with limited financial resources is task-shifting, health experts agreed, which means that nurses and lay health workers take on tasks traditionally performed by doctors, such as counselling, treatment management and HIV care.

This frees up doctors’ "expensive" time to focus on more serious medical issues, while making sure that larger numbers of patients are attended to each day.

To read the article titled, “Where To Find A Million New Nurses? ,” click here.