Health Workforce Density in Sudan

Health Workforce Density

In the last post, we discussed the health unit density comparing the different states and that sometimes the numbers can be misleading. Today we are going to talk about another important aspect of the healthcare system delivery, Healthcare workers distribution.

As per the World Health Organization (WHO), 4.45 of Doctors, nurses, and midwives per 1,000 population is the minimum ratio needed to meet the Sustainable development goals. In General, Sudan has 0.22 doctor and 0.69 nursing and midwifery personnel per 1000 population.

But look at how these numbers are distributed, and you will notice that none of the states of Sudan has the desired ratio of the workforce. Also, some states are worse than others.

You will observe the Blue Nile state has the highest health care worker ratio followed by West Darfur and the Northern States. These numbers most likely include NGOs local and international staff, which are temporary as these states are conflict zones. But the ratio of Northern state is likely to be correct due to the low population density (estimated 833K in 2006).

River Nile, Gazera, Sennar, and White Nile all have a ratio between 1 to 1.5 per 1000 population. Compare this to Red Sea, Kassala, Gedaref, Khartoum, and North Kordofan where there are fewer health workers 0.5 - 1 HCW per 1000 population. And the worst states are North, South, and East Darfur, and West and South Kordofan.

Now, compare the staff ratio numbers to the health units density numbers that we covered earlier on and you will conclude that many units are staffless. Also, you will notice that some states have a high density of units to the population but lack staff to provide the services required at these units. Training and retaining medical staff at all levels is one of the major obstacles that face Sudan and the developing countries. Building units or donating equipment is easy and takes less time and efforts compared to training medical staff.

It is worth to go in-depth into these numbers to examine the distribution of each medical staff grade by itself. i.e. studying the distribution of doctors per state per se and so on as the current measurement provides only the sum which might mask the real disparities between the states.

How to tackle these disparities is the real question but I will leave it for another post

Further reading:

The 2018 update, Global Health Workforce Statistics, World Health Organization, Geneva. [GHO | By category | Nursing and midwifery personnel](https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.HWFGRP_0040?lang=en)