By Chioma Obinna

AS the COVID-19 pandemic persists in challenging global health services to the limit even further deepening existing manpower shortages, medical supply shortages among other issues in the health industry, medical experts are calling for greater investment in the health workforce and greater promotion of access to healthcare by all.

According to the experts, the call is to forestall the growing threat and barriers towards the attainment of Universal Health Coverage, UCH, as proposed under the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

The  Director-General of the World Health Organisation, WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, observed that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that there are so many cracks and gaps in the foundation of the health workforce in terms of the shortages.

“To provide universal healthcare, we must be strategic in inclusion and innovative right now. We must shore up the foundation we have now, equip, and educate the health workers.

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“We must think of the kind of health workforce we will have in the future and to do this, it requires leadership,” he argued.

Tedros noted that health was at the core of the nation’s economic and social well being, hence, the health workforce is a critical and essential human capital.

“We now realise that we must go beyond applause for the health workers. We must enable them, we must protect the health workforce, emotionally and physically and mentally. We must remunerate and pay allowances to health workers because they are crucial in helping the population and in addressing the pandemic,” he avowed.

Corroborating his views during a keynote address presented at the 2nd webinar series of the Commonwealth Medical Association, CMA, the Director, Department of Health Workforce of the World Health Organisation, WHO, Mr. Jim Campbell lamented distractions in the attainment of the universal healthcare.

In his view, Campbell who spoke at the event entitled: “The CommonWealth Health Workforce & COVID-19: Regional Perspectives on the Current Realities, Challenges and Future Projection”, said many health work workers have been redeployed to the intensive care facilities amongst others, resulting to the elasticity of the capacity being overstretched.”

He said essential services have been reduced due to health workers redeployment and infection.

“We are also experiencing the reality of health workforce trauma, additional workload, managing stress, discrimination and stigma etc. some rebel and strike around the condition of work, the opportunity to be protected at work and issues around PPEs and this is resulting into mortalities beyond levels experienced in other places.

“We must invest in health workforce as part of the trillion and billions of dollars invested in the social-economic development around the world if we are to recover from COVID and maintain access to healthcare access to all,” he asserted.

On his part, the President of the Commonwealth Medical Association, CMA, Dr Osahon Enabulele, said the impact of COVID-19 on the health workforce has been enormous.

According to the CMA President, Commonwealth countries contribute 15 percent of infected persons.

“While we note there has been the varied impact of the pandemic on various aspects of the economy and aspect of life, the impact on the health workforce has been very tremendous with unfortunate morbidities and mortalities among healthcare workers.

According to statistics from the World Health Organisation, WHO, COVID-19 related deaths among health workers are about 10 percent of the global mortality due to the disease.

“In the Africa region, which has the worst health workforce crisis globally with only about 3 percent global health workforce, a total of 46,206 health workers are reported to be infected with COVID-19 as of Wednesday, September 2, 2020.”

He said the situation was further worsened by the impact of the health workforce migration even during this COVID-19 on account of unmet expectations.

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motivation, poor adherence to infection prevention and control measures, and of course guidelines. Despite the foregoing realities including nonexistence of COVID-19 vaccine or drugs, healthcare workers are expected to remain Compact soldiers in the war against the pandemic.”

He said the objective of the webinar was therefore to unfold the varied experiences and perspectives of health workers from commonwealth countries and various regions as it concerns the health workforce, particularly, in terms of identifying current gaps and challenges and developing a consensus framework that will help identify gaps now and post COVID era with the overall aim of boosting current efforts at defeating COVID-19.

On his part, the Prof, Rasaq Adebayo, who represented the President of the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, Prof Innocent Ujah called fro enhanced funding to provide healthcare infrastructure. equipment and essential medications etc.

“We also need the voices of citizens. especially civil society organizations and the media. We should demand better funding, stewardship. Supervision, capacity utilization, and coordination of the health sector in Nigeria and other West African countries.”

Vanguard