Transforming and scaling up health professionals’ education and training: What are the key policy issues and possible responses?

There are health workforce imbalances in terms of deficits, shortages or inequitable distribution of workers in all countries (Celletti, et al., 2011; Frenk, et al., 2010). Together with the imperative to deliver more and more effective health services, these imbalances create an urgent need to scale up the number of human resources for health, to adapt the education and training of health providers to the new epidemiological and demographic challenges, and ensure a proper skill mix, and to adopt measures and incentives to make the geographical and organizational distribution of health professionals more equitable (Frenk, et al., 2010). In many countries, this need has to be met in a context of difficult economic circumstances.