One part of healthcare frameworks and policies often overlooks a crucial element of global health — the healthcare workers. They are the ones who work on the ground, who know the issues that plague the people, who work and improvise with the limited resources, and who know the people. Healthcare centers in developing nations are often staffed with low-level medical staff, especially in more rural and hard to reach places. If these health providers had more training or better training, healthcare could improve as the result of workers having better skills to identify and to fix sicknesses and complications.

To become a healthcare worker one must be accepted into an educational establishment; however, often times these require a secondary education, something many poorer people in developing nations do not have access to. Educational reforms are part of the investment for a successful healthcare system. Having training centers that complete their three-part mission of teaching, researching and serving can make huge impacts on the trainees who will go out into the communities.

GE recognized the importance of educating healthcare workers and thus has decided to invest over US$1 billion to train 2 million global healthcare providers. The hope is that GE can establish itself more firmly in developing nations to bring more people access to healthcare.

The GE healthcare president sees that “challenges around localized capacity building, training and innovation are consistent themes for many healthcare systems and Ministries of Health around the world.” The invested money will go towards training people to use GE medical equipment in order to address those challenges. Both local governments and institutions, as well as costumers, will help in the process of determining what the health needs of a particular area are.

GE has long seen the link between healthcare workers and global health progress. They have invested in areas such as Kenya, Turkey, the Middle East, Russia, China and Brazil. In total, GE has invested more than US$118.2 million in healthcare, training more than 100,000 rural doctors and other healthcare givers.

– Katherine Hewitt

Sources: Fierce Medical Devices, WHO
Photo: Healthcare Design Magazine