Davos: We Are in it Together in Sickness or in Health
01/26/2011
Lord Nigel Crisp conveys message to leaders in Davos from the health worker conference in Bangkok
In Davos 3,000 of the great and powerful are talking about bringing the richer and poorer worlds closer together. Here in Bangkok about 1,000 health care workers are doing something about it.
In health you can't separate problems up into yours and mine, ours and theirs. The Black Death took three winters to get across Europe in the 14th Century; SARS took 3 days to get around the world at the beginning of this one. We are in this together in sickness and in health. Other diseases are waiting to make the trip. They will probably incubate in the poorest countries with the weakest health systems and develop there undetected before spreading outwards with all the facilities of the global transport systems at their disposal.
We all need to be concerned about health in other countries and to cooperate if for no other reason than our own good. The same applies in other areas, with climate change and environmental issues the obvious examples where problems cannot be contained within national or even regional boundaries.
Access to medicines is another area where tensions can and have erupted across boundaries. Who could blame the country that refused to allow tissue from its citizens who had died of bird flu to be exported without first extracting a guarantee that the vaccine manufactured from it would be available in its own country?
The Global Health Workforce Alliance has brought people from around the world to its forum in Bangkok to address another problem that is both ours and theirs - the shortage of health workers globally. This shortage hits the poorest countries hardest as workers migrate for better prospects and pay.
Migration is not all bad of course: it allows the exchange of ideas and knowledge and enables people to escape poverty and tyranny. Its impact on the poorest countries needs to be managed, however; if for no other reason than our shared need to have functioning health systems and surveillance everywhere.
Happily, the world has just begun to take the first steps to act on the problem. The World Health Assembly has agreed on a Code of Practice, the UK increased its own training levels and effectively shut its borders to health workers in 2006 and even the U.S., the largest importer, has at last started to expand its medical schools. Migration needs to be better managed, but there is an even bigger problem elsewhere.
About 135,000 trained health workers have left countries in Africa in the last 35 years. It is an enormous number, but 1.5 million are needed there today. If every African health worker returned home it wouldn't even deal with 10% of the problem.
The solutions here too are global. Richer countries can supply some of the resources, the technology and the trainers - many of whom would do this voluntarily - whilst poorer countries must define the need, the types of workers, the curricula and the delivery of the training as well as providing their share of the resources.
In our meeting in Bangkok we are determined that this won't be Europeans and Americans coming to tell Asians and Africans what to do or simply exporting their ideas and ideologies about health care and health workers.
Many countries, without the resources and the baggage of the richer ones, have for years been innovating extensively and creating new ways of working and new groups of health workers.
Everyone can bring something to the venture and the combination of technology, ideas and experience from throughout the world could be inspiring for us all. It could equip a new generation of health workers with the knowledge they need to address the desperate needs of the billion people worldwide who have no access to healthcare and the billion more for whom it is simply inadequate. It could also remind us that knowledge transfer isn't all one way and that we in richer countries could also borrow from the new traditions to the benefit of our expensive, over-professionalized and creaking health systems.
Perhaps the titans of the U.S., Europe and the East who are gathered in Davos might care to join us in a very practical project that would allow us all to learn how to bring the richer and poorer worlds together and in doing so tackle a real global crisis and build better mutual understanding and relationships for the future.
Our message to Davos is simple - we would welcome your knowledge, your skills, your resources and your passion to put alongside ours in training more health workers in low-income countries - in the spirit of everyone having something to teach and everyone having something to learn.
We are in this together in sickness or in health - and we can determine which it is most likely to be.
Learn More
The Global Health Workforce Alliance launched a joint microsite with the Guardian on the global health worker crisis to coincide with the Second Forum on Human Resources for Health in Bangkok.
Lord Nigel Crisp is a champion for the Global Health Workforce Alliance. Chief Executive of the NHS from 2000 to 2006, his latest book is Turning the World Upside Down - The Search for Global Health in the 21st Century. The photograph of Lord Crisp was taken at the Global Health Council's 2010 conference.
This is a great piece encapsulating both the need for more health worker training and for in-country leaders to set the agenda. MLI works with 5 Ministries of Health facing this issue on the ground.
Check out our blog to continue the conversation: http://www.ministerial-leadership.org/blog/crisp-davos-invest-health-worker-training
— Ministerial Leadership Initiative for Global Healt on 2011-02-03
get <a >buy cheap louis vuitton handbags</a> , for special offer
— HiniNurl on 2012-01-31