Incentives as Workforce Retention Strategy for Health Professionals in Africa – A Review

Abstract

There is a growing loss of health human resources through migration of professional health staff from Africa to developed countries which has resulted in loss of capacity of the continent’s health systems and prevents the delivery of equitable health care in the individual countries. Migration of health workers also undermines the abilities of these countries to meet global, regional and national commitments, such as the health-related United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and even their own development. It is caused by series of push and pull factors brought on by the de-motivating factors of the work environment of the source nations and the attractive work environment of the recipient countries. Therefore, many countries in Africa are beginning to address their recruitment and retention problems as staff shortages or an unmotivated health workforce are likely to have adverse effects on the delivery of health services and outcome of care. The key issue for most of these countries is how best to motivate and retain their health professional staff so as to enable  adequate health system performance. Electronic search was undertaken which yielded 981 references, out of which 9 were selected as relevant to the research questions and reviewed. Papers merited their full scrutiny
after the consideration of their title and abstract. Uncovered were nine major push factors responsible for the continued migration of African health professionals to the developed countries. The review also discovered that there is growing body of evidence that reversing these push factors is beginning to have positive effects on the motivation and retention of African health professionals.