<\/p>\n
By Tiamiyu Prudence Arobani<\/p>\n
New York<\/p>\n
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says Africa faces a projected shortage of more than six million health professionals by 2035.<\/p>\n
WHO \u200c\u200c\u200d\u2060\u2060\u200d\u2060\u2060\u200c\u200c\u2060\u2060\u200c\u200d\u200d\u200c\u200cstated this during a meeting of African health ministers in Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n
The global health body noted that Africa\u2019s health workforce has grown significantly over the past decade, reaching nearly 5.72 million professionals in 2024.<\/p>\n
It, however, regretted that the increase remained far short of what was needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe continent currently has only about 46 per cent of the health workers required to meet its needs, leaving millions of people without adequate access to essential health services.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout decisive action, the shortfall could exceed six million professionals by 2035,\u201d WHO said.<\/p>\n
According to WHO, however, Africa faces a striking paradox with health facilities struggling with staff shortages\u00a0while nearly one million trained health professionals are unemployed, with recent graduates particularly affected.<\/p>\n
In many countries, more than half of newly qualified nurses, doctors and midwives are unable to find work shortly after completing their training, it said.<\/p>\n
For WHO, the situation underscores the need to better align education and training with labour-market demand, job creation and sustainable financing, while strengthening long-term workforce planning.<\/p>\n
However, WHO expressed hope that African countries are stepping up efforts to strengthen their workforce, with a new decade-long plan announced on Wednesday in Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n
The new plan calls for coordinated investment to ensure countries have a skilled, motivated and adequately supported workforce capable of meeting Africa\u2019s rapidly growing health needs<\/p>\n
The agenda marks a shift from simply training more health workers to building sustainable, well-planned and equitably distributed health systems<\/p>\n
African health ministers also\u00a0endorsed a new regional strategy to give every child the best possible start in life<\/p>\n
Adopted during the 76th session of the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Committee for Africa, the Health Workforce Management Programme in Africa (2026\u20132035) aims to transform health-sector labour markets.<\/p>\n
The ministers approved a 10-year programme to train, employ and retain three million additional health workers in a major push to bolster health systems across the continent.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Member States have recognised that training health professionals is only the beginning,\u201d said Dr. Mohamed Janabi, WHO regional director for Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis programme turns evidence into concrete action and political commitment into sustainable investments for Africa\u2019s health workforce and, ultimately, for the health and well-being of our populations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says Africa faces a projected shortage of more than six million health professionals by 2035.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[499,500,298],"class_list":["post-790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign-affairs","tag-africa","tag-healthworkersshortage","tag-who"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/WHO.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":792,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions\/792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primerisenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}