Impact developing countrieshealth workerswomen in developing countries

Global Health Care Crisis Disproportionately Affects Women In Developing Countries And 'Urban Poor'

Why Pregnant Women In The Developing World Are The Biggest Losers In The Global Health Care Crisis
Rahel Gebreyes
|

The disparity in the number of health care workers between the developed and developing world is having an unintended consequence on pregnant women.

A WHO study released last year revealed that the global health workforce is short more than 7 million workers. That number will likely worsen to a deficiency of more than 12 million workers by 2035.

The shortage is most acute in certain regions of the developing world.

“Unfortunately it’s not only about the numbers, it’s about the distribution,” Julia Bluestone, chair of the Frontline Health Workers Coalition, said on HuffPost Live. “That means we have a much greater proportion of doctors, nurses and midwives posted in urban or more affluent areas. Whereas the urban poor or folks who live in rural or remote areas are much less likely to see a skilled provider or a nurse or a midwife.”

Bluestone, who is also a senior technical advisor at Jhpiego, saw the consequences of these grim statistics firsthand while traveling abroad.

“In Ghana, when we were visiting midwiferies five hours outside of the capital, [one woman was] the only midwife in that primary health post and served hundreds of women,” she told HuffPost Live. “She is always the one on call. She’s always the one on duty.”

Watch the full conversation about the shortage in health care workers here and here.

Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live's new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!

Before You Go

Ebola Outbreak
(01 of11)
Open Image Modal
A member of Doctors Without Borders puts on protective gear at the isolation ward of the Donka Hospital in Conakry, where people infected with the Ebola virus are being treated. (Cellou Binani/AFP/Getty Images)
(02 of11)
Open Image Modal
Health specialists work at an isolation ward for patients at the Doctors Without Borders facility in Gueckedou, southern Guinea. (Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images)
(03 of11)
Open Image Modal
Doctors Without Borders staff members carry the body of a person killed by viral haemorrhagic fever at a center for victims of the Ebola virus in Gueckedou, on April 1, 2014. (Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images)
(04 of11)
Open Image Modal
Health specialists work in an isolation ward for patients at the Doctors Without Borders facility in Gueckedou, southern Guinea. (Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images)
(05 of11)
Open Image Modal
A view of gloves and boots used by medical staff, drying in the sun, at a center for victims of the Ebola virus in Gueckedou, on April 1, 2014. (Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images)
(06 of11)
Open Image Modal
A 10-year-old boy is showered after being taken out of quarantine following his mother's death caused by the Ebola virus, in the Christian charity Samaritan's Purse Ebola treatment center at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia, on July 24, 2014. (Zoom Dosso/AFP/Getty Images)
(07 of11)
Open Image Modal
A health specialist works in a laboratory set up in a tent at an isolation ward for patients at the Doctors Without Borders facility in Gueckedou, southern Guinea. (Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images)
(08 of11)
Open Image Modal
View of an isolation center for people infected with Ebola at Donka Hospital in Conakry. (Cellou Binani/AFP/Getty Images)
(09 of11)
Open Image Modal
A worker loads material including protection gear for Doctors Without Borders at the airport of Conakry on March 29, 2014. (Cellou Binani/AFP/Getty Images)
(10 of11)
Open Image Modal
The owners of a "maquis," a small African restaurant in Kobakro, outside Abidjan, which used to serve bush meat, hold up the different types of meat and fish they now offer to their clients. The Ministry of Health has asked Ivorians, "particularly fond of porcupine and agouti," a small rodent, to avoid consuming or handling bushmeat, as an unprecedented Ebola epidemic hit West Africa. The virus can spread to animal primates and humans who handle infected meat -- a risk given the informal trade in "bushmeat" in forested central and west Africa. (Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images)
(11 of11)
Open Image Modal
A pharmacist searches for drugs in a pharmacy in Lagos on July 26, 2014. Nigeria was on alert against the possible spread of Ebola on July 26, a day after the first confirmed death from the virus in Lagos, the country's financial capital and Africa's biggest city. The health ministry said Friday that a 40-year-old Liberian man died at a private hospital in Lagos from the disease, which has now killed more than 650 people in four west African countries since January. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP/Getty Images)
Suggest a correction
|
Submit a tip