Health workforce needs in Malawi: analysis of the Thanzi La Onse integrated epidemiological model of care

Table 1 Facility-level representation

Facility level	Description	Facility type	Facility quantity
0	Facilities provide service at local level and have little infrastructure	Health Post, Village Health Committee, Community Health Station, Village/Mobile/Outreach Clinic, and other community initiatives	One set per district
1a	Facilities provide services at primary level but have less capacity than hospitals	Dispensary, Rural/Urban Health Centre, Private/Special/Antenatal Clinic, Maternity Clinic/Facility	One set per district
1b	Hospitals provide services at primary level	Community/Rural Hospital, CHAM (community) Hospital	One set per district
2	Facilities provide services at district level and provide referral services to primary level facilities	District Hospital, District Health Office*	One set per district
3	Central hospitals provide specialist health services at regional level and provide referral services to district-level facilities in that region	Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH, Central), Mzuzu Central Hospital (MCH, North), Zomba Central Hospital (ZCH, South) & Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH, South)	One set per region
4	National level resource hospitals and centres	Zomba Mental Hospital (ZMH)	One set
5	Ministry of Health Headquarters	Headquarters*	One set

Each facility level is given a description, a set of relevant facility types as collected from elsewhere [2, 5, 10, 11, 32, 33], and the facility quantity. Each district has its own sets of level 0, level 1a, level 1b and level 2 facilities; each region (Northern, Central, Southern) has its own set of level 3 facilities (central hospitals), called ‘Referral Hospital—Northern/Central/Southern’ to differentiate with ‘central hospital’ as southern region has two central hospitals; on the national level, there are Zomba Mental Hospital and Headquarters. Therefore, Malawi has 133 (= 4 × 32 + 5) facility sets in total (including headquarters that do not deliver patient facing services directly though), where the 32 districts from 2018 Malawi Census [35] include 27 general districts and 5 special districts as specified in Additional file 1: Sect. 1. *District Health Offices and Headquarters are administrative health institutions that do not provide patient facing services directly

ISSN: 1478-4491