IntraHealth announces the release of West Africa’s Regional Approach to Strengthening Health Workforce Information—a  CapacityPlus technical brief describing the West African Health Organization’s approach to developing health workforce information systems.

To address health workforce shortages, countries need accurate, readily available data on currently employed health workers—how many are working, what their qualifications are, where they are posted—and reliable estimates on how many new workers are likely to join them over time.

Lead author and CapacityPlus consultant, Professor Kayode Odusote recalls his early attempts to help member countries of the West African Health Organization engage in planning for their national health workforce. “It kept coming up that none of them had the required information,” he says. They needed a human resources information system (HRIS) that they could use for planning, while avoiding proprietary code and licensing fees.

He found an open source solution in IntraHealth’s iHRIS software, a suite of open source tools for managing and supporting health workers. “The approach we are trying to use is to be less dependent on external support and also be able to share experiences amongst ourselves,” explains Professor Odusote. “That’s why we went for open source—the advantage being that you could train people to modify [iHRIS], use it, and learn about it. You also could build experiences locally, which you could share.”

Authors include Kayode Odusote of the Foundation for Sustainable Health Development (Nigeria) as well as IntraHealth staff members Carol Bales, Sarah Dwyer, and Dykki Settle. The technical brief is available as an interactive version and a printer-friendly document.

Led by IntraHealth International, CapacityPlus is the USAID-funded global project that uniquely focuses on the health workforce needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

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