Morocco to step up medical training

06/08/2007

The World Health Organisation has listed Morocco among 57 countries with an acute shortage of healthcare professionals. To overcome the shortage, the country has launched a new programme to train 3,300 doctors annually by 2020 instead of the current 900.

By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat – 06/08/2007

[Sarah Touahri] Healthcare provision is particularly inadequate in rural areas

Morocco plans to overcome a shortage of healthcare professionals by providing training to 3,300 doctors annually by 2020 instead of the current figure of 900 per year. The initiative, to be launched at the beginning of the 2008/2009 academic year, will see 1,300 new students enrolling in schools of medicine and pharmacy.

Prime Minister Driss Jettou presided over the signature of an agreement Wednesday (August 1st) between the Ministries of Health, Education and Finance at the headquarters of the Rabat Faculty of Medicine, to increase the number of doctors from 5.1 to 10 per 10,000 inhabitants by 2020 and to improve the distribution of healthcare services throughout the country.

In a press statement, Education Minister Habib El Malki said the government had acted on the basis of an assessment of national healthcare services. "We realised that there were large gaps in provision, so we had to take another look at training in medical and pharmacy schools. This initiative is part of an effort to train and develop human resources to support the country's rapid economic and social development."

Human and financial resources are already in place to ensure the scheme will be a success. According to the Health Ministry, academic institutions will receive all the funding they need to recruit teaching staff, update training courses and upgrade hospitals and laboratories.

Healthcare professionals, who have emphasised the need in recent years to pay more attention to the planning and management of human resources in the sector, welcomed the announcement of the new strategy. Dr. Mohamed Cherqui told Magharebia it will help meet current needs for healthcare services, free medical care and compulsory healthcare insurance. "With the rising demand for healthcare services, it's high time we thought about training more doctors in Morocco. People working in the sector have been sounding the alarm for a long time now."

According to the World Health Organisation, Morocco is among 57 countries with an acute shortage of healthcare professionals.

In addition to the shortage, the Ministry of Health is attempting to tackle the uneven distribution of doctors across the country. According to official statistics, of the 16,000 doctors currently working in the public and private sectors, almost half are based in Rabat or Casablanca. This means that the average ratio of doctors to patients is much worse in many other regions. The cities and regions of Casablanca and Rabat, for example, have over 7,000 doctors while the Taza-Al Hoceima-Taounate region has only 400.

Rural areas are in need of more doctors, particularly specialists, who are often unwilling to work in the country's more remote healthcare centres. According to Cherqui, in order to address this problem the government needs to encourage young doctors to move to rural areas by offering incentives.