The West African Health Organisation (WAHO) has urged ECOWAS member states to strengthen their health workforces by improving the training, distribution and retention of professionals to address shortages and ensure quality healthcare across the region.
WAHO Director-General Prof. Palokinam Pitche made the call in Abuja on Monday at the 11th Statutory Meeting of the Regional Council for Health Professionals Education in the ECOWAS Region.
Pitche said qualified health professionals were central to effective health systems, but shortages and unequal distribution continued to limit access to quality healthcare across member states.
He said countries must urgently address the human resources crisis, warning that failure to do so could undermine efforts to achieve Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Pitche identified inadequate training programmes, limited professional development, conflicts between professions and poor retention strategies as challenges to the effective use of health personnel.
He said political, social and economic crises had further weakened health workforce management, making it difficult for countries to provide equitable healthcare, particularly to vulnerable populations.
Well-trained, motivated and equitably distributed health workers were essential to building resilient health systems and improving access to care across West Africa, he said.
Pitche said regional cooperation in training, professional mobility, knowledge exchange, capacity development and joint research would strengthen healthcare delivery and promote integration among ECOWAS member states.
The meeting was expected to finalise proposals for recognising and establishing equivalence among health professionals’ diplomas and certificates across the WAHO region, he said.
Participants would also conclude a regional action plan for training health professionals in priority areas to address workforce gaps in member states.
Pitche said WAHO would continue working with relevant organisations and development partners to implement regional decisions on health workforce training and capacity development.
He noted that WAHO had made progress in harmonising health training curricula, accreditation standards and the recognition of professional qualifications among English-, French- and Portuguese-speaking countries.
The regional programme had enabled countries with different education systems to collaborate on common health challenges by improving professional training standards, he said.
Pitche announced that WAHO would begin evaluating its human resources development programme in 2027 to assess its achievements, identify implementation gaps and determine areas for improvement.
The evaluation would provide evidence of member states’ progress and help identify challenges affecting the adoption and implementation of harmonised training curricula, he said.
Pitche said the findings would strengthen engagement with political authorities and inform decisions on improving health workforce development across the region.
He also commended WAHO officials and participating experts for organising the meeting despite regional health security concerns following the detection of an Ebola case in Nigeria.
WAHO remained committed to helping member states strengthen preparedness, prevent disease outbreaks and respond effectively to public health emergencies, he said.
Earlier, Prof. Yao Tettey, representing the West African Colleges, said postgraduate colleges had incorporated some of WAHO’s harmonised training documents into their curricula and accreditation requirements.
However, Tettey said some regional policy documents requiring national implementation had not received adequate attention from authorities in member states.
He urged WAHO to work through the Assembly of Health Ministers to encourage countries to adopt and implement harmonised policies on health workforce training and retention.
Effective implementation would promote the free movement of health professionals, address unequal workforce distribution and reduce migration, commonly known as the “japa syndrome” in Nigeria, he said.
Tettey said the harmonised documents were designed to improve training standards, strengthen workforce retention and address the growing migration of health professionals out of the sub-region.
He commended WAHO, the Nigerian Government and the West African College of Physicians for supporting the regional meeting and expressed optimism about its deliberations.
