Health workforce in the Eastern Mediterranean Region: From COVID-19 lessons to actions

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating and unprecedented impact on health and health systems globally leaving an indelible mark on health system infrastructures. The pandemic also clearly demonstrated the critical role of health workers for well-performing health systems, in particular during emergencies and have prompted the need to undergo a critical re-evaluation of health systems and health workforce design and implementation. As the year 2023 marks the halfway point of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable development, the time is pertinent for action by governments and partners to scale up the health workforce to advance towards sustainable developement goal (SDG) 3 on health and well-being and other health-related SDGs, building on the lessons from COVID-19. Therefore, at the 70th session of World Health Organization Regional Committee for Eastern Mediterranean, Member States unanimously adopted a resolution to call for accelerated actions to address health workforce challenges through solidarity, alignment, and synergy of efforts in order to rebuild resilient health systems after the COVID-19 pandemic. Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) is facing a number of health workforce issues including overall shortage.It is crucial to accelerate actions to advance health workforce for sustainable developement goal 3, learning lessons from COVID-19.At the 70th World Health Organization EMR Regional Committee, Member States adopted a resolution to call for accelerated actions to address health workforce challenges.The call for action is to prioritise unified, timely efforts for resilient post-COVID health systems.