SPA Pakistan has been made the new chief of the Global Health Workforce Alliance (GHWA) during a global conference on Human Resource for Health in Kampala, Uganda, said an official statement. Programme manager of Lady Health Workers Programme Dr Mubashar replaced Dr Francis Omaswa of Uganda as GHWA executive director. Dr Mubashar has been selected for the job in recognition of his efforts to transform the lives of millions of rural women in Pakistan. The GHWA organised the conference, where 1,500 delegates from 57 countries, including health ministers of a dozen countries and heads of international organisations and civil society federations, were in attendance. Pakistan Health Minister Ejaz Rahim led the Pakistani delegation. He said the conference focused on the crisis in developing countries regarding availability of skilled health workers for community health and human welfare in the face of growing tide of communicable, non-communicable, and emergency diseases such as SARS, Ebola, CCHF and Avian Flu. He said the conference also noted that there were 59.8 million health workers of which two-thirds (39.5 million) provide direct health services while one-third (19.8 million) were management and support workers. He warned that without a global framework and a national HRD plan, including a health workforce, the crisis would worsen.
