The Southern Africa Human Capacity Development Coalition

Countries in Southern Africa have some of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world, but human resources to address the epidemic are often limited in numbers, training and logical distribution. The Southern Africa Human Capacity Development (SA-HCD) Coalition is working, beginning in Swaziland and Lesotho, to improve the delivery of HIV/AIDS services by strengthening the capacity of health workers, policy makers and planners, program managers, educational faculties and institutions, communities and families.

To foster a strong, coordinated response to HIV/AIDS among Southern African organizations, the Coalition provides technical assistance and evaluates and shares promising practices and successful models for strengthening human resources for health. Technical assistance by the local and regional African organizations within the Coalition address the human capacity crisis by improving workforce planning and use, enhancing health worker skills and strengthening systems to support health worker performance. The program markets coalition organizations to governments and HIV/AIDS initiatives, encouraging the participation of African regional networks and institutions in combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Building on the IntraHealth-led Capacity Project's work in Southern Africa, SA-HCD also plans to initiate national-level activities, including:

• Establishing country-level HCD alliances for strategy development and leadership; these alliances will act as a bridge between the SA-HCD Coalition and sub-coalitions, helping to ensure country-level buy-in and ownership of HCD strengthening initiatives and outcomes
• Gathering information and analyzing the country's human resource situation, including gaps in health services and projection of future needs where possible.
• Developing related strategies and plans for advocacy, information sharing, knowledge management, communications, capacity building of national organizations, monitoring and evaluation
• Expanding participation to stakeholders such as district health managers and other local government authorities, representatives of community-based organizations, and key health education and service site facilities
• Monitoring progress, assessing results, and sharing successful models and lessons learned.

This two-year, $5 million program is funded by USAID. IntraHealth's partners in the program include the East, Central and Southern Africa (ECSA) Health Community, the Foundation for Professional Development, the Council of Health Service Accreditation of Southern Africa, Management Sciences for Health (MSH) and Training Resources Group, Inc. (TRG).

For more information, please download the brochure pdf file. sahcd_brochure.pdf

Contact: Stembile Mugore, Chief of Party, PO Box 1655, Brooklyn Square, Pretoria, South Africa  0075