Recent years have seen growing interest and attention in the potential of various types of CHWs in reducing inequities in access to essential health services, particularly in under-served or excluded, vulnerable populations. The WHO Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health: Workforce 2030  encourages countries to adopt a diverse, sustainable skills mix, harnessing the potential of community-based and mid-level health workers in inter-professional primary care teams. WHO developed the Guideline on health policy and system support to optimize community health worker programmes  to assist national governments, and their partners, to improve the design, implementation, performance and evaluation of CHW programmes, thereby contributing to the attainment of universal health coverage and the health Sustainable Development Goal targets.

At the close of 2025, we published two new resources for ministries of health and their partners seeking to strengthen their primary health care programmes both through assessing and enhancing competency based learning for CHWs and by using a step by step health labour market approach for programme integration.

The 2025 decisions by members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee to freeze or cut official development assistance has created a significant disruption in the global aid ecosystem and national political agendas of low- and-middle income countries . This situation has had immediate consequences for the availability of critical health services, commodities and health and care workers across countries.

A March 2025 WHO rapid assessment found that over half (63%) of WHO country offices reported job-related effects on health and care workers in countries. Budget cuts are expected to reduce countries’ ability to absorb new health and care workers, worsening existing shortages. With reduced absorptive capacity, health systems in Africa are projected to see an increase in the health and care workforce shortage of 600,000 health and care workers by 2030, compared to earlier estimates. Learn more in this blog from our panel of economists.

Who are health and care workers? 

• Health worker - Health workers are all people primarily engaged in actions with the primary intent of enhancing health. For health workers, the relevant ISCO codes are generally found within the "Health Professionals" (Sub-Major Group 22) and "Health Associate Professionals" (Minor Group 325) categories, with more specific unit groups depending on the type of health work. 
• Heath care assistant (ISCO-08 code: 5321) - Institution-based personal care workers who provide direct personal care and assistance with activities of daily living to patients and residents in a variety of health care settings such as hospitals, clinics and residential nursing care facilities. They generally work in implementation of established care plans and practices, and under the direct supervision of medical, nursing or other health professionals or associate professionals.
• Home-based personal care workers (ISCO-08 code: 5322) who provide routine personal care and assistance with activities of daily living to persons who are in need of such care due to effects of ageing, illness, injury, or other physical or mental conditions, in private homes and other independent residential settings. 

Key figures

The estimated stock of health workers now exceeds 70 million. Shortage estimates decreased steadily since the Global Strategy adoption in 2026, trends that may be linked to investment decisions, the adoption of evidence-based policies and improved data availability.

The pace of progress has slowed, however, and masks diverging trends across and within regions, prompting an upward adjustment to the projected workforce shortage by 2030 to 11 million (compared to the 2022 estimate of a projected 10 million shortage by 2030).

Women comprise 67% of the global health workforce.