Despite the 6:30 a.m. reporting time, the field trip to Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok—part of the Second Global Forum on Human Resources for Health—turned out to be one of the best events of the week.

I want to write from Bangkok about why I am excited and hopeful about the future of the global health workforce.

CapacityPlus is developing a crowdsourcing application and exploring pilot sites in several countries. This will allow the general public with any mobile telephone—with simple SMS texting capability—to report on the presence or absence of health workers, patient waiting times, or other selected quality or productivity indicators at any given clinic at any point in time.

How does the global health workforce compare to diseases such as HIV & malaria, malnutrition, and access to clean water, as a public health concern?

Health workers in Ghana, Malawi, and other countries are using their phones to photograph physical symptoms. This is just one mHealth example.

Part of my work here at IntraHealth is on a program in Ethiopia that aims to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child. One of the ways we do this is by encouraging women to deliver in a health facility where they can get prophylactic care to stop HIV transmission.

In Senegal, we're approaching violence against women and girls from a different angle.

We often talk about how countries grapple with the challenge of building and maintaining a health workforce that can deliver high-quality health services. In part, it’s a problem of too few health workers or a poor mix of the right skill sets or geographic distribution.

Reading Samuel Loewenberg’s article, “Ethiopia Struggles to Make Its Voice Heard,” I thought, finally, someone is speaking out about something too many of us remain silent on—the vast gap in some countries between actual needs and donors’ perceived priorities, particularly when it comes to HIV/AIDS funding.

Working on the CapacityPlus project, I’m always excited to see capacity-building in action and hear how local leaders are strengthening the health workforce. Recently I learned about a terrific story from West Africa and wanted to help share it.