HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT IN HEALTH DURING COVID 19 IN MUNICIPALITY OF FERIZAJ

Abstract

The management of human resources in health is of great importance, especially after the outbreak of
the Covid 19 pandemic and the problems it created all over the world, both in the health system and in the socioeconomic
system. This is even more important in the new democracies and countries in transition, such as Kosovo,
since the process of the state-building and establishing functional institutions is still ongoing.
If we analyze some recent finding that provide evidence that human resources were identified as the main problem
in the response of health authorities to the crisis caused by Covid-19, then the paper will gain in importance in
addressing issues that can provide a good source of information in improving services and response towards global
threats and diseases. In addition, the pandemic revealed severe shortages in medical and personal protective
equipment that was one of the main reasons for the level of infected medical staff. Moreover, the need for personal
protective equipment to prevent infection is high in the health sector. This protective equipment mainly consists of
protective clothes, gloves, masks, face shields, head coverings, rubber boots, disinfectants, etc. What we are going to
argue in this paper is that the amount of essential protective equipment provided by the Ministry of Health has been
insufficient.
Another issue that we are going to address in this paper and which has to do closely with the management of human
resources in health is the employment procedures when hiring new staff, the trainings offered by state institutions as
well as the professional readiness of the health workers in providing qualitative services to the citizens in time of
pandemic, having in mind that many health services were restricted as a result of many protocols imposed by the
government institutions. Additional issue to discuss will be the effect of politics in employment procedures, the
process of appointment of healthcare officials in time of government change, as it was the case in Kosovo and their
effect in the overall process of preventing the spread of pandemic.
This paper will focus on analysing the health system in Kosovo, especially in municipality of Ferizaj, the services
provided by the health institutions, the human resource management in health and its impact on the overall process
of fighting the pandemic. The methodology that will be used to address this issue will mainly consist of data
analysis of reports published by health institutions and other research papers, analyses of the government health
policies and strategies that have to do with human resource management in health, as well as conducted
questionnaire with citizens of Ferizaj regarding their opinion on the abovementioned topics. All these data combined
should answer the raised questions in this paper, which mainly focus on the human resource management in health
and their impact in combating Covid 19 pandemic in Kosovo.