The international health community converges in Washington DC next for the 35th Global Health Council conference to be held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel from May 26-31. This year’s meeting focuses on ‘Community Health: Delivering, Serving, Engaging, Leading’.
Based on its 50 years of experience working with communities in Africa, the African Medical and Research Foundation will host discussions at the conference on ‘Building Partnerships between Communities and their Health Systems in Resource-poor Settings’ on Tuesday, May 27. AMREF believes that communities must be engaged and integrated into health systems if those systems are to be effective and responsive to the health needs of the people.
“While there have been huge investments in health in sub-Saharan Africa in the past decade, these have not resulted in the expected reversal of negative health trends. People are still dying from easily preventable diseases and many are unable to get health care. There is still a huge gap between the community and the formal health delivery system. To close this gap, it is necessary to ensure that the people are fully involved in the health system,” says Dr Daraus Bukenya, AMREF’s Director for Community Partnering.
AMREF will also showcase its e-Learning programme for nurses to illustrate the use of technology to benefit the community. The programme, which is being used by Kenya’s Ministry of Health to upgrade 26,000 nurses, is an innovative way of addressing the critical shortage of health workers. Several countries have expressed interest in replicating it.
| For further information please contact: Betty Muriuki on +254 20 6993327, Cell: +254 726 261495, email: betty.muriuki@amref.org |
