Where We Work > Africa > Tanzania

Tanzania

Tanzania, including the semi-autonomous region of Zanzibar, has fewer than one doctor and two nurses or midwives per 10,000 people, far less than the minimum of 23 doctors and nurses per 10,000 people that the World Health Organization recommends. This health worker shortage exacerbates the country’s inability to offer universal HIV testing and to adequately care for the one million Tanzanian adults living with HIV and the two million Tanzanian children orphaned by the disease.

In collaboration with local partners and the Ministries of Health and Social Welfare in Tanzania and Zanzibar, IntraHealth International works to recruit, train, deploy, and retain more health workers to provide care for all Tanzanians, especially those affected by HIV. IntraHealth’s current work in Tanzania builds on the achievements of the global Capacity Project, funded by the Unites States Agency for International Development (USAID), which incuded the successful implementation of an emergency plan to:

• Assess, predict, and manage the health workforce
• Accelerate recruitment and retention of health workers and expand health care services in underserved areas
• Increase productivity by more effectively employing existing workers.

In Zanzibar, the project also worked with the ministry to recruit and retain staff in the health sector, encourage workers to be more productive, and create an electronic human resources information system to track and record key workforce information.

Tanzania Human Resource Capacity Project

Currently, IntraHealth leads the Tanzania Human Resource Capacity Project, which identifies and fills staffing shortfalls, building on the earlier work of the global Capacity Project. Over the past year, the project has also collaborated with 21 health sector leaders and managers from three regions to plan for and manage a larger and better trained health workforce.

At public and faith-based health facilities in Tanzania and Zanzibar, the project installed an electronic human resources information system, iHRIS Manage, developed by IntraHealth to help health leaders design and manage a comprehensive human resources strategy. Following installation, the project trained local staff to use the software, and local partners to provide technical and management support to ensure the system’s sustainability. Additionally, the project is training a new cadre of community workers to work with children who have been orphaned by HIV and connect them with the health care and social support services the children need. These community workers start as volunteers and may later be integrated into the health and social welfare system as salaried employees. Thus far, the project has trained nearly 1,800 volunteer workers, including 300 who were trained as supervisors.

Provider-Initiated Testing and Counseling Project

In five regions—Arusha, Kigoma, Mwanza, Mara, and Shinyanga—IntraHealth collaborates with the National AIDS Control Program and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to train health workers to routinely offer HIV counseling and testing in conjunction with other services such as dental and eye care, pharmacy and laboratory services, family planning counseling, and treatment of sexually transmitted infections. Health workers are also taught how to refer patients who test HIV-positive for additional care and treatment. The project, which is funded by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has trained nearly 3,000 health workers who have tested more than 500,000 people for HIV. In 2011, the project also started training health workers to offer male circumcision services as part of the HIV counseling and testing package. Male circumcision has been shown to reduce a man’s risk of being infected with HIV by a female partner by as much as 60%, according to the World Health Organization. The project aims to reach 25,000 men with these services by September 2011.

Past Projects

• The PRIME II Project (funded by USAID, led by IntraHealth)
• Capacity Project (funded by USAID, led by IntraHealth)

Contact

Lucy Mphuru
Project Director, Provider-Initiated Testing and Counseling Project
lmphuru@intrahealth.org
255-222-774-880/1/2

Jennifer Macias
Country Director, Tanzania Human Resource Capacity Project
jmacias@intrahealth.org
255-222-126-850

More information is available in the country brief.