7 April 2021 | On this World Health Day, the Health Workers for All Coalition (HW4All) releases its political declaration and invites civil society partners to endorse this statement:

“Worldwide, the crisis in global health is rooted in the unequal distribution of and unequal access to skilled health and care workers. As recent pandemics have clearly and brutally shown, health workers themselves are one of the most neglected elements of dismantled and underfinanced public health systems, in virtually every country. Even in weakened health systems, health workers are the linchpin of health care and are key to the provision of available, acceptable, accessible and quality health care.

  • We have seen governments and people celebrate health and care workers as their “heroes”.

  • We have seen an emphasis on formal and informal health workers, as seen in the World Health Assembly’s designation of the year 2020 as the “Year of Nurses and Midwives” and 2021 as the “Year of Health and Care Workers”.

  • We have not seen, however, a commitment to move from celebrations to political action.

This needs to change.

Our vision remains the same: Skilled, supported and protected health workers for everyone, everywhere.

Through the Health Workers for All Coalition, we aim to unite civil society around human resources for health worldwide. We strive to expand the role of civil society in global and national policy-making and spur actions on human resources for health. By igniting civil society advocacy for skilled, supported and protected health workers for all, we hold our governments and global health authorities to account in fulfilling the right to health for all and decent working conditions for health workers, by ending the health workforce crisis.”

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