According to the World Health
Organization, 40 million new
health and social care jobs must be created globally by 2030 to meet
Sustainable Development Goal 3 of universal health coverage. At the same time,
global youth unemployment reached 71 million in 2016, according to International
Labour Organization data. Could the two problems be used to
solve each other?
Director of the Health Workforce Department at the WHO Jim
Campbell believes they could. He says it’s time to “join the dots” between the
shortage of health care workers and young unemployed people. Campbell told
Devex that development practitioners need to approach the solution in a
non-traditional way, and create new training models for the next cohort of
skilled health professionals.
It is already happening in some countries, he says.
Afghanistan and Ethiopia have both created accelerated training programs to
help get more young people into health care. And while there may not be
specific pots of money available for health training for youth, he points out
that many international funding organizations have marked out job creation or
health and education as priorities…
Read the full story on Devex.
