MONROVIA – The Deutsche Gesellschaft Fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit or German Cooperation (GIZ), as part of the Liberian-German Health Program, has formally ended its project employment-oriented support to women in the health sector (EWH).
The EWH has been implemented by GIZ in partnership with the Ministry of Health & Social Welfare and other stakeholders since 2017.
The project has aimed to improve career opportunities for women in Liberia’s health workforce, in particular in technical professions and management positions.
The approach has included interventions along the different stages of a career life cycle: career choice in high schools; pre-service education; recruitment, employment and retention and career development and growth.
GIZ project director Viktor Siebert said the three-year project has been working with the Ministries of Health, Education, Gender and stakeholders to improve career opportunities for women in health.
According to a 2016 health ministry survey, women made-up 45 to 56 percent of the workforce, mainly as nurses and midwives while physicians, physician assistants and laboratory technicians were predominately men.
And Siebert believes the project has improved the overall percentage of women in male dominated areas.
“There are no recent data from 2019 [compiled] yet but, in general, the picture has slightly changed. More women are in some of these professions.
“If we look at the students among physician assistants, for example, that has increased from around 29 percent to around 35 percent. So we will see in the future there will be more and more women in these professions,” Zeiber recalled.
The project was focused in Grand Gedeh, River Gee, Sinoe, Maryland and Grand Kru Counties.
Siebert said the southeast was targeted as part of the overall focus of German cooperation in Liberia.
“And as the southeast is the remotest, poorest and most neglected part, and poorest part of the country, the government of Liberia asked Germany to support this region of Liberia.
“This project is coming to an end and we still have some ongoing activities from other projects. We will continue to remain engage in the health sector over the coming year.
“We are currently redesigning our support in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. The focus will still remain the southeast of Liberia. We started three years ago. We have achieved some things together with the ministry but there is still a lot to do.
“So we want to continue to focus on the southeast because it has been one of the neglected parts of the country in terms of health but we are also working in our donor support group to see that other parts of Liberia gets support,” Siebert explained.
He said the project was geared to support the workforce development in the southeast because many health workers find it hard to work and live due to the remoteness.
Siebert said it is very important to improve the support of these health workers to enable them provide the services to the population that needs it.
“The project budget was three million Euros. That’s around US$3.1 to US$3.2 million. That is the German contribution. The Ministry of Health and other government partners here in Liberia also contributed thru the staff they provided to implement the program,” Siebert stressed.
The program was climaxed with series of panel discussions at the Golden Gate Hotel on 10 December.
Deputy Health Minister Joyce Dunbar-Sherman, who is the wife of Grand Cape Mount County Senator Varney Sherman, graced the occasion and took part in the first discussion.
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