THE Minister of Health and Medical Services, Dr Paul Popora Bosawai and Chair of the Parliamentarian Health Committee attended the 8th Asia Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health in Port Vila, Vanuatu.
The four-day Eighth Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health, which focuses on health workforce, commenced on Wednesday and concluded on Saturday.
The theme for the forum is significant and timely given the current global challenges in health workforce gaps around the region as well as amongst Pacific Islands countries.
It was affirmed at the meeting that a well-performing health workforce is vital to a strong health system and for the provision of continuous health services
Established in 2015 the Asia-Pacific Parliamentarian Forum on Global Health (the Forum) is a platform for parliamentarians to exchange ideas, build political will, and enhance capacities and foster collaboration in driving sustainable action for health.
On the first day of the forum, Dr Bosawai and the Chair of the Parliamentarian Health Committee delivered his interventions, highlighting the major challenges and bottlenecks on health workforce in terms of limited workforce, recruitment, distribution, incentives, migration and discipline.
The inequity and disproportional distribution of the health workforce in Solomon Islands is still a major bottleneck thereby affecting service delivery, Dr Bosawai said.
Placing emphasis on this matter, Dr Bosawai stated that, “there is a tendency for the bulk of the health workforce to remain in the capital and provincial urban centers due to limited staff accommodation in the rural areas.
“Other social issues are that a nurse cannot be posted to a rural clinic because the partner (husband/wife) has a job in town and/or there is lack of other social services in the rural areas such as infrastructure, market and banking services. This is why most of the health workforce are in the capital and provincial centers.”
Meanwhile, as aligned to the National Health Strategic Plan 2022-2031, the Ministry of Health and Medical Services has been working on the review of its Health workforce policy and strategy for the past months with the support of WHO.
- MHMS
