THET’s Response to the Dublin Declaration 2017

The world faces a critical shortage of skilled health workers and it is time to find common solutions to global challenges. THET believes that the NHS can lead on this and that the NHS and its founding principles can serve as a highly-valued model for ensuring the poor don’t get left behind.

The NHS is a global leader in workforce education and training, recognised both in terms of the quality of the educational opportunities but also the low cost, in comparison to other developed countries and so can lead the way on this development of the global workforce.

THET believes that the UK can move from competition to collaboration in the recruitment, education and retention of health workers, in ways that bring mutual benefit to the health systems of all countries and address the shared 18 million recruitment challenge.

That’s why THET supports the spirit of the ‘Declaration on Human Resources for Health: Building the Health Workforce of the Future’ made at the Fourth Global Forum on Human Resources for Health in Dublin and we stand ready:

1. To support the Global Health Workforce Network to track progress on the implementation of the Global Strategy and its milestones, High-level Commission recommendations and immediate actions
2. To prioritize health system strengthening, including ensuring an adequately skilled and compensated health workforce
3. To strengthen our collaboration to expand and transform investments in the health and social workforce, with particular emphasis on empowering women and advancing youth employment

It is also a good moment to reflect on the commitments we made at the previous Global Forum held in Recife back in 2013.

Our commitments in Recife were:

1. To support health partnerships and deliver international programmes, which support and respond to the Human Resources for Health development objectives and are characterised by collaborative relationships based on inclusivity, respect, reciprocity and mutual accountability.
2. To actively support the development of a policy environment in the UK that enables international volunteering from the NHS and other healthcare professionals for the benefit of the global health workforce
3. To work to improve the quality and impact of health partnership working, and facilitate the growth of the health partnership community by:

• Gathering evidence: looking at what works well and what does not,
• Providing technical support to health partnerships to deliver increasingly diverse and effective projects across a wide range of specialisms
• Sharing good practice: acting as a hub and providing platforms and opportunities to accelerate the sharing and adoption of good practices

And we are pleased to report that good progress has been made against these commitments and reflective evidence can be found in the evaluation of the Health Partnership Scheme, in independent project completion reviews and policy reports such as In our mutual interest.