International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | January 2021 | Vol 8 | Issue 1 Page 90 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Selvesta JM et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2021 Jan;8(1):90-96 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Status and effects of health workforce related factors on implementation of universal health care in Nakuru West Sub County, Nakuru, Kenya Jackline Mokeira Selvesta 1 *, Moses Otiati Esilaba 2 , Oscar Omondi Donde 2 INTRODUCTION Globally, 400 million persons cannot access the health care services of the quality that they need while 5 billion people are unable to get affordable, safe, equitable health services despite world health organization (WHO) putting a lot of effort to support healthy life style. 1 The report by WHO has shown inadequate number of 7.2 million health care workers from 83 nations globally, which do not meet the current required number of skilled health workers. 2 Indeed, the government of Brazil has put efforts to fill the gaps in healthcare workforce by improving human resource health (HRH) management and policy-making, which has so far boosted their working conditions, trainings of health care workers and in return increased the numbers of physicians by 66% and nurses by 500%, which led to quality health care being offered to the community, and as a result boosted health care access by the under privileged population. 3 ABSTRACT Background: Globally, due to low health care coverage, there have been continued efforts to ensure that there is increased accessibility to quality, affordable and equitable universal health care (UHC) services in most parts of developing countries, such as within Nakuru county in Kenya. Methods: The study focused on determining health workforce gaps in health care facilities that might affect the implementation of UHC in Nakuru West Sub County. Cross-sectional study design was applied, data was collected using structured questionnaires, analyzed using statistical package for social sciences 23 rd version and presented in charts for ease comparison. Results: The findings of this study indicated that there was shortage of HWCs. This implies that the staffing in the facilities located in Nakuru West Sub-County is inadequate for the implementation of the Kenyan government UHC and it was evident that the mostly affected sections were the nursing, public health officer (PHO), pharmacy, clinical officers and laboratory in that order. Most alarmingly, majority of the HCWs (58.2%) were not being appreciated for good work, despite the fact that they play a key role in the implementation of UHC. Conclusions: It is therefore imperative for the county government which is the arm of the Kenyan government to ensure that they recruit adequate health care workers in all cadres to serve the continuously rising population and HCWs should have adequate level of education, acceptable training skills and be well- motivated. Keywords: Universal health care, Health workforce gaps, Shortage of HCWs 1 Mount Kenya University, School of Public Health, Thika, Kenya 2 Department of Environmental Sciences, Egerton University, Egerton, Kenya Received: 23 September 2020 Revised: 17 November 2020 Accepted: 19 November 2020 *Correspondence: Jackline Mokeira Selvesta, E-mail: jacklineselvesta@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20205681