News: Health Workers

During 2021, the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, IntraHealth International reached 317,443 health workers in 42 countries, helping to make high-quality health care available to more people around the world. Our programs led to: $33,399,555 in financial aid provided for student health workers through IntraHealth programs 2,524,424 COVID-19 vaccines distributed through IntraHealth programs 223,677 men provided with voluntary medical male...

COVID-19 stole the headlines in 2020—and revealed that most countries were vastly underprepared for a pandemic. But it also shed light on incredible human ingenuity and fortitude. We saw frontline health workers navigate a deluge of COVID cases while also trying to keep crucial services available. We saw the fastest vaccine development in history. And we saw more clearly than ever our need for stronger supply chains, better mental health services...

Before COVID-19, the world was facing a shortage of 18 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low- and middle-income countries. By September of this year, one in seven reported cases of COVID-19 were health workers and at least 7,000 health workers had died—likely significant underestimates due to lack of data. Although the true burden of COVID-19 infections on the health workforce is unknown, the loss of health workers from COVID-19 will have...

More countries are using mHero to tackle their COVID-19 epidemics, including to monitor the health of their frontline health workers, speed up communications between ministries and the front lines, and boost surveillance and response for COVID-19 and other disease threats. During any disease outbreak, real-time communication between national health authorities and frontline health workers is critical to protecting health workers and saving lives...

Today, as COVID-19 continues to invade our thoughts and lives, my mind is on frontline health workers. They don’t have the option to work from home, as many of us are doing today. They’re on the front lines as I write this—in hospitals, clinics, and triage centers around the world—putting themselves at risk to stop this pandemic. Now, more than ever, health workers need our support. Last week, as I began my new job as president & CEO at...

The government of Kenya is now using IntraHealth’s iHRIS software to manage 25,000 health workers contracted through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). IntraHealth already supports national and county governments in managing Kenya’s 67,000 public sector health workers using iHRIS through the USAID-funded Human Resources for Health Kenya Mechanism. But now that use is expanding. HIV testing, care, and treatment in Kenya is...

Over the course of our 40-year history, IntraHealth International has consistently designed creative solutions to health workforce challenges. From new technologies to old-fashioned human storytelling, we find new solutions to longstanding problems. In a new technical publication, we highlight seven examples of how and why we look for new ways to get results. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s inside The Future of Global Health Starts Here: 7 Creative...

The Department of Health of Jharkhand, India, is using the mSakhi mobile app as part of its ambitious program to screen clients in Ranchi district for noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) with a focus on hypertension and diabetes. One in four Indians is at risk of dying prematurely—that is, before the age of 70—from an NCD, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). India is the first country to adapt the WHO’s global monitoring framework to...

The global agenda is clear: universal health coverage. And as we heard at the Third Global Forum on Human Resources for Health, a strong, qualified health workforce is essential to achieving this goal. But how do we create a strong global health workforce that can provide care to all 7 billion of us? One of the keys is information—reliable, accurate information on health workers’ skills and qualifications. Data on individual health workers’...

iHRIS team lead Dykki Settle is co-author of an article appearing in the November 2013 Bulletin of the World Health Organization. The theme for the bulletin is "human resources for universal health coverage." The article, "Leveraging information technology to bridge the health workforce gap," makes recommendations for how information and communication technologies can be used in training, deploying, supporting, and empowering front-line health...