CapacityPlus’s Wanda Jaskiewicz participated in a technical workshop on improving rural retention of health workers in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Held June 21-25, the workshop was sponsored by the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization. The World Health Organization has invited CapacityPlus to help apply the WHO global retention recommendations in country-specific settings.

The workshop included presentations on the draft national human resources for health policy and strategic plan 2009-2020 and updates on related work in the country, including medical education and training.

One of the main workshop goals was to develop a plan of action to implement health worker retention strategies and discuss the way forward in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic as a focus country for implementation of the WHO’s global recommendations.

Going forward, CapacityPlus proposes to assist the Ministry of Health in its retention strategy process by building capacity to apply tools for assessing health worker preferences and costing retention interventions. CapacityPlus is currently developing these tools.

 [Note: also published on the CapacityPlus website.]