Protecting the health, dignity, and safety of Africa’s healthcare workers

Healthcare workers are the backbone of every health system. In Africa that backbone is carrying an extraordinary load. Over the past decade, the health workforce in the WHO African Region has grown substantially, increasing from approximately 1.6 million in 2013 to around 6.5 million -by 2022. This includes the numbers from the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMRO) African countries. Despite this progress, the gap between population health needs and available staff remains wide. Africa is still projected to face a shortage of more than 6 million healthcare workers by 2030, placing immense and sustained pressure on those who remain in service and stretching already fragile health systems to their limits.

Beyond workforce numbers and pay, limited access to training, career development, and progression opportunities represents a critical but under‑recognised threat to the sustainability of Africa’s health workforce. Many healthcare workers have restricted access to structured postgraduate training, continuing professional development, mentorship, and clearly defined career pathways. This challenge is particularly acute in the field of Occupational Health, where formal training programmes remain scarce or entirely absent across much of the continent, despite the significant occupational risks faced by healthcare workers themselves. The lack of trained occupational health professionals means that preventable workplace hazards—biological, psychological, ergonomic, and organisational—often go unrecognised, under‑reported, and inadequately managed within health systems.

This January we will focus our attention on three urgent and interconnected threats to the health and safety of healthcare workers across the continent:

• Psychological health and wellbeing, including burnout, moral injury, anxiety, depression, and the cumulative impact of working in chronically under‑resourced, high‑pressure, and emotionally demanding environments.
• Infectious diseases, with particular emphasis on viral infections and tuberculosis, where healthcare workers continue to face elevated occupational risks due to gaps in infection prevention and control, ventilation, personal protective equipment availability, vaccination coverage, and TB prevention strategies.
• Violence against healthcare workers, ranging from verbal abuse and intimidation to physical assault, an increasingly visible and damaging problem that undermines personal safety, workforce retention, and trust in health services.

Throughout the month, the Centre of Occupational and Environmental Health Africa (COEHA) will highlight evidence, lived experience, and practical, context‑appropriate solutions. The focus will be on strengthening occupational health systems, improving workplace safety, supporting psychological wellbeing, addressing infectious risks, promoting fair employment conditions, expanding access to training and career pathways, and advocating for the development of sustainable Occupational Health training programmes across Africa. Protecting the health of healthcare workers is not a luxury—it is a prerequisite for patient safety, resilient health systems, and the future of healthcare on the continent.

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