Fact: Washington, DC, with a population of fewer than 600,000, has about twice as many physicians as do the over 80 million residents of Ethiopia.
For almost a decade, PHR has been a world leader on building human resources for health. What does that mean? We advocate to governments and funders around the world to help increase the number of health workers in developing countries so they can help communities realize the right to health.
We have a MAJOR opportunity to advance health workforce capacity coming up in April. Congress will be introducing a new bill, the Global HEALTH Act, which would provide $2 billion dollars for developing countries to build their health workforce capacity.
On World Health Day, April 7, we’ll ask you to send an email to your Congressperson urging him or her to co-sponsor this bill. Until then, we’ll be posting 1-2 blog posts a week about the Global HEALTH Act so you can learn more.
To start off, we’ve created this fact sheet with some important information about the Global HEALTH Act, which you can download, read, and share with colleagues: Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.
Check out excerpts below to learn more about the bill. And spread the word: doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health workers around the world—and the communities they serve—will thank you!
Global HEALTH Act of 2010
The Global HEALTH Act of 2010 responds forcefully and comprehensively to health systems that are broken, with the health workers who are at the core of these systems often missing. At the bill’s own core is a new Global Health Workforce Initiative to support a comprehensive approach to meeting their health workforce needs, including developing and implementing national health workforce plans. The Initiative would initially include at least 12 countries, with the bill authorizing $2 billion over five years to help countries recruit, train, retain, equitably distribute, and increase the effectiveness of their health workforce.What else does the bill do? The Global HEALTH Act:
- Requires development of a comprehensive US global health strategy through a broad consultative process, with specific indicators and benchmarks to ensure progress and accountability, and addressing laws and policies that may undermine global health programs.
- Authorizes assistance to improve health service delivery and promote effective national health strategies in developing countries.
- Ensures that the US global health strategy addresses the role of local civil society in holding their governments accountable and how the United States will support meaningful civil society involvement in national health decision-making.
- Establishes policies that all health workers in US global health programs should have safe working conditions and access to health care, and be trained on women’s rights, and stigma and discrimination, and people’s right to access health services.
- Sets improving health services for marginalized populations as an overarching US global health objective, and encourages countries to similarly address equity within their own health strategies.
