AMREF DG Dr Teguest Guerma was recently interviewed by the WHO Journal during the 62nd session of the WHO Regional Committe for Africa held in Angola between 19th - 23rd November, 2012 here are some excerpts from that interview.
Dr Teguest Guerma
What is the role of AMREF in health service delivery?
AMREF was founded in 1957, fifty five years ago, as East African Flying doctors. But since then the role of AMREF has completely changed. We are an African organization trying to find African solutions to African problems using African expertise. We focus on communities and we believe that communities if empowered and given the skills and means can transform within and make a lasting health change on their own health.
AMREF works with the poorest of the poor, the most vulnerable. We are in fact a small WHO at the Primary Health Care level. So we work in maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria, Water and Sanitation, training and research. We work towards getting health services to the remote communities. We are the only organization working both at community and at national level. We take what is working at the community level to the national level.
What needs to be done in order to empower communities to fully participate in health decision making.
First of all it is an approach. We need to approach communities with respect. We need to ask them their needs. Communities are not ignorant, they know what they need. But most times we go to them and say, we know what you need and we will do the best for you because this is what you need. Once communities are involved from the scratch in the interventions, then they will have full ownership and they will participate. If they don’t own something they cannot be accountable. So, we let them do it themselves and mentor them. In the end, they should maintain the intervention by themselves because we are not going to be there forever. We are only there to develop and change them. That is the approach we are using but of course it takes time.
How can AMREF support WHO to implement the strategies and resolutions agreed upon in the Regional Committee?
AMREF and WHO can work very well together because WHO is a normative, convening organization while AMREF is an implementing organization that supports. Before WHO produces guidelines, I think AMREF can help by getting ownership from the communities, district health workers and community health workers. So we can bring this input into the guideline at that level. When the guidelines are developed, most of the times they are not implemented. We can help WHO to implement the guidelines at Primary Health Care level. We can use our system which is already for this purpose.
We can also assist WHO with training at our international training centre for mid-level health workers. We can cover more than 30 countries in Africa with our training and outreach programmes. We can also assist WHO with participation in decision making. Nowadays, you can no longer decide as member states only. If we really want to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, we need to work with the civil society, government and private sector. So we can be the intermediary between WHO the communities, NGOs, civil society and the private sector.
AMREF is a transparent organisation distributing funds of up to $85 million per year.
