HIV/AIDS control programmes in developing countries: The role of human resource

The health sector is one of the most challenged sectors in the developing countries given to the shortage of trained manpower particularly in Africa and Asia. Human resource is a very important aspect of any functioning health systems. However this aspect is often neglected in the long term plans and strategies development for the sector. We observe that often in the disease control programmes due importance is not given to this aspect. Generally human resource planning is ignored and just seen as an administrative function in disease control programmes. This affects the overall effectiveness of the programmes in terms of its impact on disease control. We observe an acute shortage of trained manpower in many countries. There are several reasons of such a crisis like situation in human resources in health. Among them some are like HIV/AIDS epidemic, training capacity, brain drain, poor working conditions and remuneration. Especially, the human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS control programmes have suffered a lot due to the shortage of trained manpower particularly in countries where HIV is among the main health problems. However there are ways in which such problems can be addressed to ensure the sustainability of HIV control and other disease control initiatives in developing world to reach near to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG –particularly goal-6) in health. In this paper, authors discussed the evidence based solutions to the problem of human resource in health sector to combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases in developing countries. Some of the ways to address the problem are improving the training capacity, improving use of available skills, staff retention and support, recognizing the health workers rights and understanding their work related issues along with taking care of administrative processes involved in the management of the human resources.   Key words: Health, health and human resource, human resource crisis, disease control,human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome.