Through this $4.9 million, three-year award from the US Agency for International Development, IntraHealth International is partnering with the government of Mali to strengthen its health workforce, scale up progress in maternal and child survival, and protect its citizens from emerging health threats such as Ebola and pandemic influenza.

Mali has significantly reduced its maternal, newborn, and under-five mortality rates in the last twenty years. But despite these efforts, the country continues to have some of the highest rates of preventable maternal and child deaths in the world, due in part to a severe shortage of qualified health workers. This same shortage also makes Mali vulnerable to emerging infectious diseases and other health security threats.

The USAID/Mali Human Resources for Health Strengthening Activity is helping to build a strong and connected health workforce to realize Mali’s 10-year health and social development goals as well as the objectives of the US Global Health Security Agenda. The project will:

• Build Mali’s capacity to coordinate an effective response to global health security threats.
• Improve the management and use of health workforce data for use in planning and decision-making.
• Strengthen preservice health education.
• Apply evidence-based recruitment, retention, and motivation strategies to ramp up staffing levels in the health facilities most in need.

Technical briefs published under the USAID/Mali Human Resources for Health Strengthening Activity:

• Decentralizing Mali's Health Workforce Information System
• Transforming Health Worker Training in Mali Using a Competency-Based Approach
• Using the Optimizing Performance and Quality Approach to Improve Human Resources for Health in Mali
• Contribution of the Gao Nursing School to the Training and Retention of Health Workers in the Northern Regions of Mali
• Analysis of Inequalities and Discrimination in the Recruitment, Retention, and Promotion of Women in Preservice Education and Health Care Facilities in Mali