The audit’s report was presented to stakeholders on Thursday at Serena Hotel in a high profile workshop. It was conducted in both the Rwandan Public and Private sectors by the Ministry of Public Service and Labour in partnership with the Human Resources and Institutional Capacity Development Agency (HIDA) and the Office of the President.
While it revealed that Rwanda suffers an overall skills gap of 40% if different sectors are considered, the health sector was not found at any comfortable status. The assessment found out that the gap for professionals in the health sector such as doctors and other specialists is at 67 per cent as that for technicians such as nurses, midwives, family planning field workers, social workers, and laboratory technicians was at 43 per cent.
“With this skills structure, it is unlikely that Rwanda’s ambitious health sector goals can be met,” the skills audit report concludes.
In the country’s five-year Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS), a government plan to develop major sectors that can speed up the country’s development, key goals envisaged in the health sector include slowing down the population growth through family planning and reproductive education outreach programmes.
The EDPRS target is to reduce total fertility rate from 6.1 to 4.5 children per woman. The goal is to be supplemented by improvements in maternal health by increasing the number of women who make four antenatal visits a year from 13 per cent to 50 per cent, raising deliveries in health centers, and increased number of midwives in rural areas.
“There is therefore a significant unmet demand for family planning. Yet, with such significant demand , only 3 per cent of women not using contraception were visited by a family planning field worker in 2006,” the researchers observed in a summary on the audit findings.
They recommended for a rapid increase in a number of professionals and technicians in the medical field if national demand for family planning services and contraception is to be met.
The Director of the Multi-Sector Capacity Building Programme (MSCBP) under HIDA, Charles Karake, says the government-commissioned ‘National Skills Audit’ will pave way for the development of a ‘National Skills Development Policy’. The policy will guide the process of closing the skills gap in line with the requirements to achieve targets set in the EDPRS, he said.