HEALTH Minister Ummy Mwalimu has urged medical experts to be ready to work in remote areas to address the scarcity.

Ummy made the call in Dar es Salaam yesterday when speaking at the National Human Resources for Health (HRH) Conference, meant to commemorate the legacy of the late Benjamin Mkapa through the Benjamin Mkapa Foundation (BMF).

She said the scarcity facing health centers, clinics, and district hospitals have highly contributed to degrading health services in Tanzania.

“Let me encourage healthcare workers not to fear working in remote areas as most of the necessary community services are now available,” she said.

According to her, the Late Benjamin Mkapa-Former President of Tanzania was an icon who ensured that Tanzanians were benefitting proper medical services through the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) that he initiated in the year 2000.

She added: “The National Health Insurance Fund has been a major source of income through various services provided through the fund.”

She further noted that the government is anticipating obtaining fruitful recommendations on the health sector from the conference upon the Sixth Health Sector National Strategic Plan of the year 2026-2031 that will go along with concluding the 2050 National Plan.

Brenda Msangi, Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT) hospital Chief Executive Officer and a panelist, said the Performance Management System (PMS) can be one of the initiatives that can improve healthcare institutions and the health sector at large.

“100 percent of CCBRT activities depended on donors when we initially started. There was no purpose at all. We had to create a system to change the behaviours and culture, Performance Management System was one of them,” she said.

She added: “Knowing clearly people, purpose and process was also a focus of what we had a solution as we saw that it was important to start unwiring and with that at a rate of 54 percent, we have reduced the dependency.”

The conference comes at a crucial time when Tanzania is striving to address the human resource gaps in health and driving a transformative process to attain a resilient health system for Sustainable Development.

The global shortage of Health Care Workers threatens healthcare access, and Tanzania is no exception. But also, the efforts to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC) goals in Tanzania are hindered by the critical lack of skilled health professionals, as outlined in the recent HRH profile.