The Women Deliver Conference kicked off at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre with an appeal to global leaders to make health and welfare of women and girls a priority. During a satellite symposium organised by WHO titled ‘Integrating community-based TB activities into MNCH programmes’, Dr Meshack Ndirangu, Deputy Country Director of AMREF Kenya made a presentation on how AMREF uses this approach. The objective is to ensure that more women with TB especially those who are pregnant are diagnosed in time and treated.
In April 2013, AMREF assessed the status of community TB/MNCH integration in eight projects in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. The objective was to identify key health system gaps as well as recent achievements. Some of the achievements included more mothers getting tested for TB at the community level. However, said Dr Ndirangu, there was still need for standardisation of referral tools that are used in different countries to facilitate proper analysis of data.
The session was chaired by Haileyesus Getahun and had two other speakers, Thomas Joseph from the Stop TB Department of WHO and Gillian Burkhardt of PSI. The speakers highlighted the importance of integration using the available community-based resources as an entry point of containing the disease that is the second top killer of women worldwide. Research indicates that one-third of the world population has latent TB and in 2011 an estimated 500,000 women died from it.
At the end of the three-day Women Deliver Conference, there will be more than 100 sessions which will focus on women and girls’ health, specifically around maternal and reproductive healthcare rights. The discussion topics have a wide spectrum, from universal healthcare, sex education and family planning. The gathering is one of the largest global meetings focusing on health and empowerment of women and girls to influence the future development agenda. This year, about 7,000 people among them healthcare professionals, government officials, policy makers, women’s rights advocates, policymakers, non-governmental organisations and civil society groups are in attendance.
More on the Women Deliver conference
- AMREF showcases the model of a successful eHealth programme
- AMREF at the Second Global Midwifery Symposium
AMREF is a transparent organisation distributing funds of up to $85 million per year.
