Table 1 Summary of HRH component of COVID-19 response plans

Angola

The national response plan for the COVID-19 pandemic incorporated capacity-building activities for health care workers. The process for recruiting 9,290 health professionals in the public sector was exceptionally shortened to ensure that needed health workers were in place within a short space of time.

Burkina Faso

The COVID-19 response and vaccination plans were developed using a multi-sectoral approach. This made it possible to plan and budget for the capacity building and incentives for the health care workers.

Chad

The COVID-19 response plan included major interventions regarding the training, protection and motivation of health and social workers based on estimated needs. The recruitment of 1666 health and social workers during the COVID-19 period was based on the existing recruitment plan in the General State Budget, adopted in 2019. However, the COVID-19 accelerated the resource mobilization and recruitment processes.

Côte D’Ivoire

Côte d‘Ivoire’s National COVID-19 Response Plan addressed the HRH issue from a transversal perspective. For each of its 8 pillars, the specific HRH needs and challenges (recruitments, redeployments, capacity building, etc.) were identified and planned for. To speed up the process of ensuring that health workers are available, the Human Resources Department’s redeployment plan placed 2,740 health workers that were recruited in 2019 at the disposal of the various pillars involved in the fight against the pandemic.

Eswatini

The country incorporated HRH in the national COVID-19 Response Plan and depended on HRH needs forecasting model for recruitments. The plan also focused on shortening bureaucratic processes in recruitment to 30 days and this ensured timely deployment to areas of need.

Ghana

Building on the national COVID-19 response plan, standalone plans for risk communication, case management, surveillance and contact tracing, and HRH were developed. The HRH plan focused on boosting surge capacity through recruitment and equitable distribution, capacity building on COVID-19, and strategies for improving the morale and commitment of staff to respond to the pandemic. Some of the measures included recruitment of additional staff, redeployment of existing staff, insurance cover for health workers and monetary incentives through tax reliefs, and an allowance for all frontline health workers.

Guinea

The National Health Security Agency carried out an estimation of the needs for the health and social workers. The recruitment resulting from this estimate proved to be insufficient to respond to the COVID-19. This informed the recruitment of additional health and social workers on temporary contracts to fill the gap.

Guinea Bissau

The High Commission for COVID-19 repurposed health professionals such as doctors and laboratory staff to support the screening and surveillance services.

Liberia

The incident management system formulated a national COVID-19 preparedness and response plan that considered the health workforce in the public and private sector, and the majority of those mobilized for the COVID-19 response were those that participated in the 2014 Ebola response. The planning and mobilization of the surge team mainly included redeployment of health workers from the county health teams, hospitals, and the national Ministry of Health for the response.

Mali

131 health workers were recruited in 30 days at some hospitals in Bamako, against a usual recruitment process that lasts 90 days. Several regions of Mali developed regional COVID-19 response plans with HRH-related interventions mainstreamed along the pillars. This included a provision for the remuneration of the on-call health workers.

Mauritania

The government recruited additional health personnel for the COVID-19 response. Estimates of needs for this recruitment were made based on the health workforce available in the local health labor market with most of the health assigned to reinforce essential health service delivery.

Niger

The COVID-19 response plan included interventions related to HRH. The development of the plan was based on a multi-sectoral approach, which allowed public authorities from the various sectors to accept and accelerate the recruitment of health workers.

Nigeria

The national COVID-19 response plan mainstreamed HRH interventions in the 8 pillars of the response. The existing health workers particularly doctors, nurses, midwives and medical laboratory scientists were redeployed to provide care in isolation and treatment centers. Health workers were also deployed to support the various response pillars– infection, prevention and control, surveillance, coordination, and risk communication.

Senegal

As part of the response to COVID-19, Senegal strengthened the availability of personnel in health and social action structures. Temporary recruitments of 770 health workers was done, with the duration of the recruitment process being 14 days against the usual 60 days. In addition, redeployments were carried out for 45 doctors, and 364 students and retired health workers.

Togo

The process of developing the COVID-19 response plan was inclusive. HRH was an integral part of the different strategies developed and implemented and this included the recruitment of temporary staff (712 medical staff and 996 paramedical staff), the development of national and sub-national training plans, incentivizing for staff involved in the management of COVID-19 cases etc. Actions relating to HRH represented 23% of the Plan’s budget.