This Strategy constitutes the response by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) to the human resources crisis in Lesotho and is firmly embedded within broader government and sector policies. The basis for this document is (a) the existing MOHSW Retention Strategy (Feb 23, 2010), (b) broader government strategies, pertaining to retention, (c) recommendations made by the PriceWaterhouseCoopers study (PWC, Nov 2009), and (d) existing sector-specific policies and strategies that have a bearing on attraction and retention of health workers. Whereas previous versions of this Retention Strategy focussed primarily on monetary incentives for health workers, this edition takes a more holistic and comprehensive approach to defining country-specific priority retention interventions.
It is anticipated that this Strategy will contribute to mitigating some of these causal factors associated with high rates of attrition of health workers. This Strategy seeks to establish the mechanisms that control loss-abatement, brain drain and a largely de-motivated workforce, by putting in place measures, such as salary improvements, better conditions of service and better living conditions for health workers.