IOM is organizing a seminar on Migration
and Human Resources for Health at the International Conference
Center in Geneva, on 23-24 March.

Part of IOM's International Dialogue on
Migration, it will bring together more than 160 public health
officials, academics, practitioners, representatives of NGOs and
other health and migration experts from around the world to discuss
innovative policies to better manage the mobility of health care
workers.

Human resources are critical to delivering
high quality health care services. A global shortage of health care
workers and their unequal distribution around the world has been
perpetuated by steady flows of international, regional and internal
migration.

Insufficient supply of health care workers is
an increasing challenge not only in developing source countries,
which regularly suffer public health crises, but also in receiving
countries, facing demographic challenges due to ageing
populations.

The shortage of human resources for health has
been identified as one of the most critical public health
constraints in achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals, as
well as the WHO/UNAIDS "3 by 5 Initiative".

WHO at the 57th World Health Assembly 2004
adopted a resolution addressing migration as a major challenge for
health care systems, declaring "Human Resources for Health
Development" the theme of World Health Day 2006 on 7 April.

To address issues raised by the migration of
health care workers, IOM and WHO signed a Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU) to apply a migration management framework
within the context of human resources for health.

The management of the mobility of health care
workers involves migration, health and labour issues and IOM, WHO
and ILO are collaborating to develop effective strategies to manage
the problem.

Thursday's seminar will build on previous IOM
inter-sessional IDM workshops on migration and health in 2004,
migration and trade in 2003 and 2004 and migration and development
in 2005.

The timing of the workshop is set to serve as
preparation for and input to the World Health Assembly's May 2006
consideration of Human Resources for Health and to the June 2006
International Labour Conference.

For more details on the seminar and background
documents, please visit the IOM Website at: "paragraph-link-underlined" href=
"http://www.iom.int/en/know/idm/mhr_2324032006.shtml" target=
"_blank" title=
"">http://www.iom.int/en/know/idm/mhr_2324032006.shtml