Task shifting in health care in resource-poor countries

There is good evidence and compelling logic to support the principle of task shifting-ie, the allocation of tasks in health-system delivery to the least costly health worker capable of doing that task reliably. Luis Huicho and colleagues,1 in today's Lancet, provide the most comprehensive study of this topic to date. They compared results across four countries and found that health workers with a shorter duration of training performed at least as well and sometimes substantially better than those with a longer duration of training in assessing, classifying, and managing episodes of routine childhood illness, and in counselling the children's carers.sch_iih372pub164pub946