In its 2006 annual report, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Human Resources for Health (HRH) among its 192 member states. This report recognized widely varying data availability, with many non-OECD nations having limited access to information on their health workforce. National data were collected as part of this effort, using three approaches: WHO national surveys conducted through its regional and country offices, contacting various national administrative sources, or “compiled from a previous version of the WHO’s Global database on the health workforce”1. Data from many Caribbean nations were collected using this third approach, which obtained very little detail, with information that had not been updated for a number of years. To improve this paucity of information, the Human Resources for Health Unit of the PanAmerican Health Organization (PAHO) has partnered with the Ministries of Health in the Eastern Caribbean (EC) to support the systematic collection and country-level analysis of HRH data as part of the Region’s 10-year commitment to health workforce development.

There are nine Eastern Caribbean nations involved in this data collection process which is proceeding in three work phases:

phase 1 included Barbados and has been completed, phase 2 includes four Eastern Caribbean Countries (ECC): Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and is the subject of this report. Phase 3 will include Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Monserrat, and the British Virgin Islands. In addition, this PAHO data collection programme has been extended to other countries in the Caribbean Region: Belize, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago. It is expected that these data collection exercises will form the basis for a regional HRH database to follow trends in human resources for health through time. In turn, this resource can help to inform priorities and sustainable policies for enabling a healthcare workforce tailored to the needs of the individual countries and the Region as a whole. This report from the Barbados/ECC data collection team, presents data from four Eastern Caribbean (EC) countries: Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. (AU)