The availability of skilled professionals is key to maternal and neonatal health. At Maternova, we are interested in mapping the current locations of skilled birth attendants--but just as interested in highlighting the precise areas where access is most inadequate. A new study documents health workers shortages country by country in Africa and I briefly cover it here. The World Health Organization has previously estimated that Africa needed 818,000 additional health care professionals. A more recent analysis by Scheffler, Mahoney, Fulton Dal Poz and Preker forecasts the shortage of midwives, nurses and doctors in 39 African countries. The article is available free in a web exclusive for about 8 more days on the Health Affairs website. The authors forecast that the shortage in Africa is 240,000 doctors and 551,000 nurses and midwives. Shortage estimates per country are estimated using a metric of professionals per 1,000 population. For nurses and midwives, the top ten countries with the most severe nurse/midwife shortages are as follows:
- Mozambique
- Gambia
- Madagascar
- Central African Republic
- Burundi
- Rwanda
- Cameroon
- Equatorial Guinea
- Lesotho
- Niger
Photo credit: Gold Star Nurses and Gold Star Clinic Opening Ceremony; Suez, Egypt; (c) William Mackie/CCP, Courtesy of PhotoShare
