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  3. Why the workforce is important Picture of the

Why the workforce is important Picture of the

游客2024-02-18  16
问题                                Why the workforce is important
    Picture of the global workforce
    Based on new analyses of national censuses, labour surveys and statistical sources, WHO estimates there to be a total of 59.2 million full-time paid health workers worldwide. These workers are in health enterprises whose primary role is to improve health(such as health programmes operated by government or nongovernmental organizations) plus additional health workers in non-health organizations(such as nurses staffing a company or school clinic). Health service providers constitute about two thirds of the global health workforce, while the remaining third is composed of health management and support workers.
    Workers are not just individuals but are integral parts of functioning health teams in which each member contributes different skills and performs different functions. Countries demonstrate enormous diversity in the skill mix of health teams. The ratio of nurses to doctors ranges from nearly 8:1 in the African Region to 1.5:1 in the Western Pacific Region. Among countries, there are approximately four nurses per doctor in Canada and the United States of America, while Chile, Peru, El Salvador and Mexico have fewer than one nurse per doctor. The spectrum of essential worker competencies is characterized by imbalances as seen, for example, in the dire(可怕的) shortage of public health specialists and health care managers in many countries. Typically, more than 70% of doctors are male while more than 70% of nurses are female a marked gender imbalance. About two thirds of the workers are in the public sector and one third in the private sector.
    Driving forces: past and future
    Workers in health systems around the world are experiencing increasing stress and insecurity as they react to a complex array of forces some old, some new. Demographic(人口统计学的)and epidemiological transitions drive changes in population-based health threats to which the workforce must respond. Financing policies, technological advances and consumer expectations can dramatically shift demands on the workforce in health systems. Workers seek opportunities and job security in dynamic health labour markets that are part of the global political economy.
    The spreading HIV/AIDS epidemic imposes huge work burdens, risks and threats. In many countries, health sector reform under structural adjustment capped public sector employment and limited investment in health worker education, thus drying up the supply of young graduates. Expanding labour markets have intensified professional concentration in urban areas and accelerated international migration from the poorest to the wealthiest countries. The consequent workforce crisis in many of the poorest countries is characterized by severe shortages, inappropriate skill mixes, and gaps in service coverage.
    WHO has identified a threshold in workforce density below which high coverage of essential interventions, including those necessary to meet the health-related Millennium Development Goals(MDGs), is very unlikely. Based on these estimates, there are currently 57 countries with critical shortages equivalent to a global deficit of 2.@4 million doctors, nurses and midwives. The proportional shortfalls axe greatest in sub-Sabaran Africa, although numerical deficits are very large in South -East Asia because of its population size. Paradoxically, these insufficiencies often coexist in a country with large numbers of unemployed health professionals. Poverty, imperfect private labour markets, lack of public funds, bureaucratic red tape and political interference produce this paradox of shortages in the midst of underutilized talent.
    Skill mix and distributional imbalances compound today’s problems. In many countries, the skills of limited yet expensive professionals are not well matched to the local profile of health needs. Critical skills in public health and health policy and management are often in deficit. Many workers face daunting working environments poverty-level wages, unsupportive management, insufficient social recognition, and weak career development. Almost all countries suffer from maldistribution characterized by urban concentration and rural deficits, but these imbalances are perhaps most disturbing from a regional perspective. The WHO Region of the Americas, with 10% of the global burden of disease, has 37% of the world’s health workers spending more than 50% of the world’s health financing, whereas the African Region has 24% of the burden but only 3% of health workers commanding less than 1% of world health expenditure. The exodus of skilled professionals in the midst of so much unmet health need places Africa at the epicentre of the global health workforce crisis.
    This crisis has the potential to deepen in the coming years. Demand for service providers will escalate markedly in all countries rich and poor. Richer countries face a future of low fertility and large populations of elderly people, which will cause a shift towards chronic and degenerative diseases with high care demands. Technological advances and income growth will require a more specialized workforce even as needs for basic care increase because of families’ declining capacity or willingness to care for their elderly members. Without massively increasing training of workers in this and other wealthy countries, these growing gaps will exert even greater pressure on the outflow of health workers from poorer regions.
    In poorer countries, large cohorts of young people(1 billion adolescents) will join an increasingly ageing population, both groups rapidly urbanizing. Many of these countries are dealing with unfinished agendas of infectious disease and the rapid emergence of chronic illness complicated by the magnitude of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The availability of effective vaccines and drugs to cope with these health threats imposes huge practical and moral imperatives to respond effectively. The chasm is widening between what earl be done and what is happening on the ground. Success in bridging this gap will be determined in large measure by how well the workforce is developed for effective health systems.
    These challenges, past and future, are well illustrated by considering how the workforce must be mobilized to address specific health challenges.
    The MDGs target the major poverty-linked diseases devastating poor populations, focusing on maternal and child health care and the control of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Countries that are experiencing the greatest difficulties in meeting the MDGs, many in sub-Saharan Africa, face absolute shortfalls in their health workforce. Major challenges exist in bringing priority disease programmes into line with primary care provision, deploying workers equitably for universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment, scaling up delegation to community workers, and creating public health, strategies for disease prevention.
    Chronic diseases, consisting of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, cancers, injuries, and neurological and psycho logical disorders, are major burdens affecting rich and poor populations alike. New paradigms of care are driving a shift from acute tertiary hospital care to patient-centred, home-based and team-driven care requiring new skills, disciplinary collaboration and continuity of care as demonstrated by innovative approaches in Europe and North America. Risk reduction, moreover, depends on measures to protect the environment and the modification of lifestyle factors such as diet, smoking and exercise through behaviour change.
    Health crises of epidemics, natural disasters and conflict are sudden, often unexpected, but invariably recurring. Meeting the challenges requires coordinated planning based on sound information, rapid mobilization of workers, command and control responses, and intersectoral collaboration with nongovernmental organizations, the military, peacekeepers and the media. Specialized workforce capacities are needed for the surveillance of epidemics or for the reconstruction of societies torn apart by ethnic conflict. The quality of response, ultimately, depends upon workforce preparedness based on lo cal capacity backed by timely international support.
    These examples illustrate the enormous richness and diversity of the workforce needed to tackle specific health problems. The tasks and functions required are extraordinarily demanding, and each must be integrated into coherent national health systems. All of the problems necessitate efforts beyond the health sector. Effective strategies therefore require all relevant actors and organizations to work together.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案 B
解析 文章的一段指出59.2 million只是full-time paid health workers的数量，除此之外，还有其他一些health workers，所以整体数量应不止59.2 million。
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