RETS - Rede Internacional de Educação de Técnicos em Saúde

During his lifetime, Albert Einstein reiterated several times the importance of experience as a source of knowledge. English comedian and writer Douglas Adams, in turn, while lamenting the apparent unwillingness of humans to learn from the experience of others, made a point of emphasizing that this is one of the capabilities that differentiate us from other animals. By adding to that the express purpose of RETS to facilitate and foster the sharing, among other things, of information and experiences among its members, we see no impediment to disclose within the Network the successes and difficulties faced by Malawi, a small African country, in the execution of their daring emergency plan of human resources for health established in 2004.

Does a plan whose objective was to prevent the total collapse of a system “on the edge of chaos”, according to the Minister of Health of Malawi, can serve as an example for other countries? What was done? What went right and now makes it feasible for the country to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in Health? What endangers the achievements? Is it possible to provide sustainability and continuity to emergency measures? There are many questions and certainly many of them have no conclusive answers. What is left for us is to reflect on the subject and the expectation that, at some point, this “alien experience” might be useful to our own goals.

The networks of health systems structuring institutions of UNASUR – RETS, RESP and RINS – are the subject of a second story whose goal is to show our readers how the South American countries have sought to organize themselves to overcome some of the challenges faced by national health systems.

To complete the issue, we present the new World Bank strategy for Africa, with emphasis on partnerships and knowledge; the results of the workshop “Challenges for human resources in health training and professional practice in MERCOSUR”, held on April 7 and 8 in Asuncion, Paraguay; and, finally, the launching by WHO of a booklet about the process of developing the soon-to-be-published policy and technical guidelines designed to improve the education of health professionals.

Happy reading!

RETS Executive Secretariat