A World Health Organization (WHO) report, Working Together for Health (2006 a) has estimated a global shortage of 4.3 million health workers, including 2.4 million physicians, nurses and midwives. This translates into a shortage of over a billion people having no access to health care worldwide.

The Global Health Workforce Alliance has identified three core health professional problems as: a) improving recruitment, b) improving performance of the existing workforce, and c) slowing the rate at which workers leave the health workforce (WHO 2006a). To avert the problems, GHWA has developed health professional incentive guidelines to mitigate shortages and losses among countries.

WHO has identified 57 countries of the world affected by health workers shortages as being ‘in crisis’? Uganda falls among these.

Uganda also faces multiple problems in recruiting, improving performance and slowing down the rate at which workers leave the health workforce.

In a recent study results, conducted by Prof. Francis Omaswa and others (2017) entitled, Brain Drain to Brain Gain: A case study on the stock and flow of the surgical workforce in Uganda thirty thousand (30,000) doctors have fled Uganda in five years between 2010 and 2015 to search for greener pastures. This translates into 509 Scania Global Touring buses carrying 59 seated tourists!

A number of other researchers that have investigated shortages of health workers globally and particularly in Africa have pointed at human resource management as a leading factor.

Further Reading Here