Tracking All Health Workers in Botswana

Kabelo Bitsang works at the Botswana Ministry of Health. His job is to help the Ministry know enough about the country’s health workers so it can plan effectively for recruitment, training, and retention.

Without current data on health workers, countries can’t ensure that the right provider is in the right place with the right skills. As Bitsang recalls, there was no centralized information system for all health workers across the public and private sectors, and various departments used different databases.

With Bitsang’s help, the Ministry of Health implemented iHRIS Manage, CapacityPlus’s free, Open Source software for maintaining information on health worker deployment and attrition. “We are using iHRIS to track all health workers in the country, what districts they work in, and what cadre they belong to,” Bitsang says.

One benefit of the new system is the ability to manage health worker training. “Tracking the training will make it easier for the Ministry to identify the workers eligible for certain courses,” Bitsang explains. “It will also be possible to see which workers are working in areas they are not trained for.”