Muhammad Kashif, Ramesh Kumar, Siham Sikander, Jawaid Sultan, Nida Ghaffar.
Assessment of health workforce providing maternal neonatal child health services at primary health care level of Sanghar, Sindh.
Pak J Public Health Jan ;4(1):20-3.

Background: The world is focusing the attention towards attainment of the Millennium Development Goals especially those related to maternal and child health, especially MDG goal 4 and 5. Nearly 9 million children under the age of ve die every year , mostly due to preventable causes and more than 350,000 women die annually from complications during pregnancy or childbirth with 99 percent in developing countries. Skilled care before, during and after childbirth can save the lives of millions of women and newborn babies. Methods: Cross sectional study with mixed methods approach were conducted at the T aluka Sinjhoro District Sanghar Sindh by interviewing the health care workers and health managers working in the public health facilities. V alidated and reliable tool were used after taking the written consent. Private hospitals were excluded from the study . Result: Overall there are around 0.49 health services providers, 0.18 lady doctors and 0.22 nurses per 1000 population, the ratio of nurse to doctor is 1.22. Majority of the health service providers for MNCH services are working in the rural areas. Qualitative ndings like factors responsible for the shortage of HRH providing MNCH services seem to lie in transportation and security problems, scarcity or lack of sanctioned posts for female staff, political interference in the recruitment of staff, centralization of the health system, low salary packages for staff, poor infrastructure/working environment, lack of proper opportunities of schooling for staff and poor management by the district managers were found. Conclusion: Although the study extends to limited area but it has a lot of policy implication as it has highlighted the current HR shortage which must be addressed in order to move closer to achieving MDG 4 and 5. Moreover it has also put forwarded the factors responsible for shortage of staff which can be used as a baseline for further research and as a guideline by the policy makers for evidence based human resource management.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com