African nurses and doctors can now sleep easy
African Update – 07/09/10
For the first time, African and other poor countries were able to hold their own and negotiate for a fairer Global Code on the way their nurses and doctors would be recruited to work in rich countries from now on. In the August/September issue of New African, Dr. Lenias Hwenda from Zimbabwe tells what happened.
World Health Organization (WHO) member states recently negotiated and adopted a historic Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel (called, for short, the Global Code)...In rersponce to global health workforce shortages, the Global Code makes recommendations on strategies for increasing global health workforce training, ensuring global cooperation to help countries train and retain sufficient health personnel for their population needs, promoting non-discriminatory treatment of migrant health personnel in destination counties, and scaling up reporting mechanisms to monitor progress on global health workforce imbalances.
Despite being a voluntary instrument, the Global Code has provisions for monitoring governments' efforts to align their policies with its provisions under the auspices of the WHO.
More in the current issue of New African which is available in the African Information Centre library.
