During emergencies, local health care workers carry a triple burden of recovering from personal injury and loss, helping their family and friends, and providing care to the broader population. Loss of skilled health care workers during emergencies is a challenge. Furthermore, health needs are often not only greater during emergencies but different from before and therefore different skill sets and expertise may be needed to manage them.

• The RMNCAH/CAH working group and partners work with the health cluster lead to evaluate the current health workforce capacity and needs and establish a plan for response.
• Review existing staffing levels using national standards and classifications of job functions adapted to the emergency setting (see section 2.2 Needs assessment). Consider how to best use existing staff, including task-shifting or expanding the scope of practice to allow lower skilled health care workers to perform additional duties.
• Coordinate staff recruitment, training, and deployment with the government and other health agencies, including the private sector. Recruit sufficient staff to match needs, ensuring a mix of skills and appropriate gender and ethnic ratios. Consider both paid and volunteer roles.
• Integrate local health workers into the emergency response. Support local staff by providing flexible working conditions during crisis situations and training to handle new roles and changing health priorities.
• Develop incentive and salary strategies that minimize pay inequities and uneven distribution of health workers between the Ministry of Health and other health providers. Consider non-monetary incentives. Avoid recruiting people away from underserved regions.
• Identify priority facilities and skills to target retraining and recruitment activities. Train staff based on an assessment of their performance and skills:
• Use national standards or international guidelines. Incorporate approved RMNCAH messages, humanitarian action information, new/revised service delivery protocols, and codes of conduct (e.g., Core Humanitarian Standards).
• Use practical, task-oriented training methods, ideally in their usual work environment, to promote effective learning and application, for example, on-the-job training and supportive supervision.
• Integrate training activities within existing programs as much as possible (e.g., IMNCI). Coordinate training sessions with the Ministry of Health and other agencies.
• Provide ongoing and refresher training to maintain the skills of health care workers, as the usual continuing education system may be lost.
• Ensure health workers, including community health workers, operate in a safe working environment. Provide:
• Occupational health training and protection (e.g., hepatitis B and tetanus immunization for clinical workers).
• Infection prevention and control training.
• Adequate infection prevention and control equipment and protective equipment to carry out duties.
• Share health workforce data on availability and readiness with the Ministry of Health at national and subnational levels.
• Train staff on responding to the needs of children at high risk and adolescents. Improve the capacity of staff and services to provide confidential and respectful services to all children and young people.

• The RMNCAH/CAH working group and partners have supported the health cluster to evaluate the current health workforce capacity and needs and established a plan for response.
• Availability of health workers:
• 1–2 community health workers per 1000 population
• 23 qualified health workers per 10,000 population