Task Sharing in Family Planning

Many developing countries face strains in meeting the demands for provision of health services because of limited medical personnel. This situation has been exacerbated by the continued "brain drain" of highly trained medical professionals, and, more recently, by the increased demand for HIV services, especially in countries with a generalized epidemic. This has led to renewed interest in task sharing, also known as task shifting. A key feature of task sharing is that those with less medical or paramedical training can provide some of the same services with the same quality as those with more training. While the term "task sharing" is new, the concept has been applied for many years in family planning programs as various tasks became shared between doctors and nurses or between nurses and community health workers. The consensus reported in a recent WHO document, 'Task Shifting to Tackle Health Worker Shortages', was that task sharing "will positively affect health outcome… Good management, support, supervision and political commitment," are needed for success. (WHO, 2007) In family planning, perhaps the most important reason for task shifting is to bring services to women with poor access. Since it is not always cost effective to build clinics in sparsely populated rural areas, women will either be forced to travel long distances for services or non- clinic-based services must be provided in local communities.