The imbalances in Human Resources for Health that result from health professionals crossing borders of districts, countries, and moving from private to public sectors and vice versa or leaving health services to join other non-health related business leads to inequity in delivery of health services, especially in the parts of the world that do not have sufficient incentives to attract these professionals. This internal and international migration of health professionals has been noted with concern in the developing and more developed world though little information is available on the rates and reasons for the same.
The study whose summary is presented here tried to compare the attrition rates in three Private Not For Profit and three Government General Hospitals in West Nile Region over a period of five years. It also examined the destination to which the health professionals were lost, the source of the new staff that replaced those lost by the hospitals, the reasons for attrition as perceived by the existing staff in the hospitals, what kept some of the staff working for longer period than others who chose to leave, and the incentives that were in place for attraction and retention of health professionals in these hospitals. The results and recommendations are as summarised in this article.
