The second in this year's Working for Health 2030 webinar series co-hosted by WHO and NHS England, this seminar examines how to find and allocate the necessary resources for an inclusive, well-distributed and motivated health workforce.
Health workers form the backbone of health systems. In many low- and middle-income countries, chronic underinvestment in the health workforce continues to undermine health systems strengthening efforts and progress toward universal health coverage (UHC). The African and Eastern Mediterranean regions bear the greatest burden of the global health workforce shortage, projected to be over 11 million workers by 2030, despite growing youth populations and often high rates of unemployment.
While financing health and care workers accounts for the largest share – 50-70% of recurrent costs – of health expenditures, health systems cannot function without trained, educated, motivated and competent health workers. Failure to allocate resources for well-distributed interdisciplinary health workforce teams in adequate quantities weakens service delivery, compromises care and widens inequalities.
This seminar, aligned with the second Africa Health Workforce Investment Forum, focuses on how countries can move from aspirational human resources for health strategies to financially credible, politically viable workforce strategies that can be funded, implemented, and sustained over time. This session will provide a platform for sharing international perspectives, focusing on innovative and evidence-based health system funding models, stewardship and governance, and analytical approaches.
Meet Our Chair
Dr. Ogochukwu Chukwujekwu is a public health leader with nearly two decades of experience strengthening health systems and advancing health financing and governance at both national and international levels. Currently serving as Team Lead for Health Financing and Governance at the WHO Regional Office for Africa, her career has spanned key technical and leadership roles within WHO and the international NGO sector, and she has provided health policy support across diverse countries in Africa and the Western Pacific.
Originally trained as a medical doctor, Dr Chukwujekwu holds an MSc in Public Health, specialising in Health Economics, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her professional expertise spans health systems governance, financing, primary health care reforms, health services management, and monitoring and evaluation of public health programmes. Register for the seminarMeet our Panel
- Dr Frederick Mensh-Acheampong, Director of Human Resource for Health Development, Ministry of Health in Ghana.
- Alex de Jonquieres, Director, Health Systems and Immunisation Strengthening, Gavi
- Paul Healy, Deputy Director of Productivity, NHS England
- James Smith, Senior Lead for Financial Strategy, NHS England
- Dr Elizabeth Igaga, Senior Director of Program Safety, Smile Train
Additional information: NHS England