The Government of Kenya will absorb more than 870 health workers contracted over the past three years through an Emergency Hiring Plan developed by the IntraHealth-led Capacity Project to address the country’s severe shortage of health professionals. Appointing the contract workers to permanent positions in the public health care system ensures that the increased access to HIV/AIDS, family planning and other critical services gained through the emergency plan will continue.

“If the Emergency Hiring Plan employees were not absorbed as promised, many health facilities would have been closed,” notes Samuel Kaloki of the Kenya Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation. “This would have resulted in a major crisis in those affected areas of the country. So this approval is a big boost to health service delivery and confirms that the Government of Kenya has fulfilled her longstanding commitment with development partners. We hope that this will challenge them further into opening up additional support to help us address our country’s human resources for health crisis.”

The Emergency Hiring Plan was designed to rapidly hire, train and deploy qualified workers to public health facilities using a private-sector outsourcing mechanism.  As part of the plan, the Capacity Project assisted the ministry to adopt new, more transparent and rapid hiring and training approaches that reduced the normal deployment time for health workers from more than a year to less than six months.  The Emergency Hiring Plan reached more than 200 health care facilities, many in remote locations.

“We applaud the Kenyan government for its decision to absorb the health workers,” says IntraHealth president and CEO Pape Gaye. “This represents both a real commitment to tackle the health worker crisis and a wonderful example of a successful public/private partnership. I expect many countries in sub-Saharan Africa will look at this model with interest. IntraHealth and the Capacity Project partners are proud to be part of this groundbreaking effort.”