Health Care Human Resource Capacity Building Initiatives Influencing Sustainability of Hiv/aids Services at Siaya County Referral Hospital, Kenya
Abstract
The HIV prevalence in Siaya County is 24.8 percent (4.2 times higher than the national
prevalence) according to the Kenya HIV Estimates 2015. It is estimated that by the end of 2015,
a total of 126,411 people were living with HIV in the County. There is a need for improvement
in the County’s cascade of HIV care to achieve the unmet gaps of the UNAIDS 95:95:95 targets
in identification, linkage, and viral suppression. Timely HIV diagnosis, optimal linkage and
retention to care for persons diagnosed with HIV, increased coverage of ART and viral
suppression can only be achieved with a competent Healthcare workforce. The Kenya Healthcare
system however, experiences an acute shortage of qualified and competent Human Resources for
Health (HRH) in addition to their uneven distribution both geographically and within facilities.
Focusing on Siaya County Referral Hospital (SCRH), this project sought to determine the
Healthcare Human Resource Capacity Building Initiatives Influencing Sustainability of
HIV/AIDS Services. Project objectives included: to identify the human resource capacity gaps in
terms of knowledge, skills, competencies and numbers; to identify the human resource capacity
building initiatives currently being applied at Siaya County Referral Hospital; to determine the
influence of terms of engagement, remuneration, performance appraisal, work environment and
turnover intent of staff; and to identify the program level challenges faced by development
partners all of which influence sustainability of HIV/AIDS services at Siaya County Referral
Hospital. Applying survey research design and using simple random sampling as well as
purposive sampling, a sample of forty five hospital staff, four hospital executives and four
partner program officers was drawn for the baseline survey. Researcher administered
questionnaires and Interview Schedules were used to collect primary data which resulted in a
response rate of 81.95%. The survey findings revealed that the major human resource capacity
gap was staff numbers with specific skills and competencies. The widely used human resource
capacity building initiative at SCRH was formal training and on-job training/mentorship. The
terms of engagement, remuneration, performance appraisal and work environment greatly
influenced the staff turnover intent and ultimately employee satisfaction. The main program level
challenge faced by the HIV development partner was lack of sustainability plans for the HIV
programs at SCRH. It was therefore recommended that an SCRH Human Resource Capacity
Building Committee be established whose mandate would be to develop a HR Needs Assessment
Report, a HR Capacity Building Plan, a Staff Engagement and Performance Status Report which
would guide the development and implementation of a HIV Program Sustainability Plan for
SCRH. The project could eventually be rolled out to the sub-county hospitals in Siaya County as
well as other facilities offering HIV clinical services in Nyanza region and Kenya at large. A
recommendation for further research is to identify factors hindering development and
implementation of sustainability plans for HIV Programs in Kenya.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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