Hi all
It’s been a while since my last email in October 2019. Some neat things have happened in the meanwhile. An email just a few days afterward from Dr. Prosper Tumusiime of WHO AFRO captured the outcome of WONCA Africa and WHO AFRO Collaboration. South Africa became rugby champions of the world! I was awarded for lifetime achievement by the Alliance of South African Independent Practitioner Associations (ASAIPA), who are planning to join WONCA. I attended the WONCA Executive Committee meeting and reported on progress in Africa. Also managed to persuade WONCA to join HIFA, get WONCA to pre-fund WONCA Africa Conferences on a loan basis and get support for AfroPHC. Phew!…. my wife and I also managed to visit Bangkok and have a short holiday in Phuket. Then I had to catch up on emails and a year of to-do’s that had piled up….
My key task for 2020 is the development of the African Forum for Primary Health Care (AfroPHC) a project that was hailed by the WONCA EXCO as a major step for family medicine globally. AfroPHC is bringing together the various leaders of the PHC team in Africa: doctors, nurses, clinical officers, community healthcare workers and the array of multidisciplinary team members as the voice of the PC/PHC team and its supporters, sharing and supporting each other in advocating for PHC and a strong team-based and community-oriented approach to PHC service delivery under universal health coverage (UHC) in Africa. The core team, as listed on AfroPHC.org and leading this process, have been engaging, with their first virtual meeting on 21st January 2020. There is already an AfroPHC Google Group with over 300 people interested in AfroPHC and a steady stream of useful posts. Join us! We have a series of webinars planned introducing the various organisations involved and their views on AfroPHC. Register now on the links below.
- 18th Feb – Nursing: ICN, AAAPN, Midwifery, Nursing Now
- 17th Mar – Doctors/Clinical Officers: WONCA, ANAC (Associate Clinicians)
- 21st April – Public Health/CHWs: AMREF, TUFH
- 19th May – Educators/Team: AfreHealth, AfriPEN, Primafamed
WONCA Africa is working closely with WHO AFRO to ensure that WHO Country Representatives engage with WONCA Africa country member organisations to set up a local AfroPHC Forum with high-level government officials in those countries to address PHC policy under UHC. We hope that the AfroPHC Conference in June 2020 brings ALL this energy together. I urge you to register for the AfroPHC Conference 19-21 June 2020 at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The programme will involve some key inputs from African leaders but there will be lots of facilitated small group discussions. We hope to emerge with a short conference statement that would make our position known. WONCA and WHO at a global level are supporting the AfroPHC process to help them develop a concept document on PHC teamwork across the globe. The AfroPHC core team is reviewing drafts of this document and a draft will be tabled at the conference for discussion.
In order to support this concept document and the overall AfroPHC process, I urge you to tell us of good examples of PHC teamwork in Africa and share this as case studies. We will be circulating the formal Case Study Guideline on the Google group but you can begin to formulate some ideas. The case study should show good outcomes from PHC teamwork, including doctors, nurses, clinical officers, CHWs, etc. in managing integrated PHC services for a defined community. Specific issues to include are team composition, community engagement/population management, services provided and any evidence-based outcomes that have been demonstrated with this model. We would also like you to indicate what country-level data would need to be collected (that you perhaps collect) to help to scale up your model in your country and in Africa.
Once again, join AfroPHC here. Register for the June Conference here. Keep tabs on AfroPHC via Facebook, Twitter, or Telegram.
Visit WONCA Africa for PhD support and academic development. Keep tabs on WONCA Africa using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. Don’t forget to join us for the WONCA2020 Conference in Abu Dhabi.
Check out www.ProfMoosa.com for more useful stuff e.g.
- Free resources on Corona Virus
- WHO declares the new coronavirus outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern
- Governance of National Community Health Worker Programmes in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
- Nigeria universal health coverage actions network established, registered, functional
- Kopernio
- Deaths from Democratic Republic of the Congo measles outbreak top 6000
- Majority of adolescents worldwide don’t do enough physical activity
- Year of the Nurse and the Midwife
- The impact and challenge of type 2 diabetes mellitus in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Documentary on Family Medicine in Malawi
- WHO Africa: Traditional healers broaden health care in Ghana
- Promotional flyer TUFH 2020 and TUFH
- Tedros Ghebreyesus: Health is a political choice
- Doctors are turning to YouTube to learn how to do surgical procedures, but there’s no quality control
rgds, Shabir
Assoc. Prof. S. Moosa
MBChB, MFamMed, MBA, PhD
Jhb-Wits Family Medicine / Wonca Africa
+27(0)824466825 / +27(0)11–9840128
ProfMoosa | AfroPHC | WoncaAfrica
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