Keeping Healthcare Workers Healthy:

The Lesotho Wellness Centre for Health Care Workers

Health workers are the heart and soul of health systems. And yet, the world is faced with a chronic shortage - an estimated 4.2 million health workers are needed to bridge the gap, with 1.5 million needed in Africa alone. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most heavily affected region of the world with 25 % of the global burden of disease, but just 3 % of the world's health workers.

The burden of this disparity falls heavily on health workers. African healthcare systems are projected to lose up to 20% of their healthcare workers due to illness, migration, and unacceptable working conditions, such as insufficient supplies and equipment, work overload, poor salaries and high stress levels. Lesotho, with the world' second highest incidence of HIV and a struggling health system s all to familiar with these conditions.

Through its projects like “Love Listens”, SHARED has provided medical supplies and equipment as well as community gardens to support nurses and other health care providers in Lesotho who work under intensely pressured conditions.

The International Council of Nurses (ICN) a federation of 135 national nurses associations is addressing this crisis through a program of Wellness Centres for Healthcare Workers and their Families . The Lesotho Nurses Association Wellness Centre was established in 2007, with the support of ICN and the Swedish Nurses Association, to provide comprehensive health services for all healthcare workers and their families. The goal of the program is to sustain a healthy, motivated and productive workforce which, in turn, is better able to care for patients and communities. The program includes testing, counseling, stress management, training, and treatment.

The Lesotho Wellness Centre, operated by the Lesotho Nurses Association and with four staff members, is currently housed in the capital city of Maseru in a prefab building. A mobile clinic has been donated to the Wellness Centre but currently there is no budget for the driver. Medicines are supplied to the Centre by the Lesotho government. However, medical supplies and equipment for the Wellness Centre and for the health workers that the Centre serves are in very short supply.

SHARED has been asked to expand its “Love Listens” program to include the Lesotho Wellness Centre where medical supplies and equipment are needed to treat the healthcare workers that use its services. In addition, stethoscopes, digital thermometers, and blood pressure cuffs will be made available to give to nurses as an incentive to seek early testing, counseling, stress management, and other services to help them keep themselves healthy. Their patients and families rely on them. SHARED is relying on you to support our work.

A donation of $50.00 will pay for a package of three items – stethoscope, thermometer, and blood pressure cuff – that will give a nurse the tools to care for her patients, her family, and herself. A contribution of $100.00 will arm two nurses with these simple but vital instruments.

Your contribution can change the lives of nurses in Lesotho and the patients they treat.  Please make your tax deductible contribution today!