The Ministry of Health and Medical Industry of Turkmenistan has approved a 5-year action plan for the development of human resources for health in the country, said the WHO Regional Office for Europe.
The plan, developed with WHO support, sets a series of ambitious goals to be achieved by 2025:
improved planning and effective use of human resources for health;
development of the medical education system and continuous learning for health professionals;
management and international collaboration for human resources for health;
building of scientific and technical capacity;
monitoring and evaluation in the management of human resources for health.
The approval of the action plan is the culmination of a year of collaboration between the Ministry of Health and Medical Industry, WHO and stakeholders in the country.
Health workforce at the core of well-functioning health systems
The management and delivery of effective health services can only function with a sustainable health workforce. The creation, management and governance of human resources for health is therefore essential for health systems to perform well and to be able to quickly respond to new challenges. To ensure a dynamic and skilled health workforce focus should be placed on planning, education and training, recruitment and retention, managed migration, and quality and skills management. With the adoption of the action plan, the Government of Turkmenistan is proclaiming its commitment to making human resources for health a priority.
Workforce register to plan and manage health workforce
To facilitate the planning, management and effective use of the health workforce, the action plan calls for the setting up of a human resources for health register to document all health workers in the country.
Learning from the experiences of countries who have set up a register of human resources for health provided invaluable lessons and practical examples of effective approaches and solutions. WHO organized a series of visits on 11–16 November 2019 for representatives of Turkmenistan’s Ministry of Health and Medical Industry, State Medical University and primary health care system to Latvia and the Russian Federation. Participants met with local specialists responsible for the development and maintenance of their human resources for health registers to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and experiences.
Colleagues in the hosting countries provided their Turkmen visitors with practical demonstrations of register functionality and examples of the analytical reports that can be produced, and demonstrated what data could be obtained by applying various filters to the systems. Specialists of both countries also shared information on the legislative base that is regulating the work of the registers.
