Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Rachel True, MPH and Marion Billings, MSc. Global Health through Education, Training & Service (GHETS), 8 N Main Street, Suite 404, Attleboro, MA 02143, 508-226-5091, rachel@ghets.org

Uganda's health system faces enormous challenges including high rates of infant and maternal mortality, endemic malaria, pervasive poverty and the devastation of HIV/AIDS. Mounting evidence indicates that primary healthcare teams anchored by generalist physicians are well equipped to deal with these illnesses equitably and cost-effectively. The Ugandan government is committed to providing primary healthcare services to all through the Uganda National Minimum Health Care Package (UNMHCP), which will include services to address maternal and child health problems, communicable and non-communicable diseases, health promotion, disease prevention and community health initiatives. But with a doctor to population ratio in rural areas nearing 1:50,000, they face a serious shortage of the basic human resources necessary to achieve this goal in all communities.

To address this gap, the faculties of medicine at two leading Ugandan universities have joined forces with eleven other African universities, representing eight sub-Saharan countries, to form an intra-Africa network of family medicine departments. The African Family Medicine Consortium (AFaMEC), integrates primary health care training within and between East and Southern African countries, allowing participating institutions to share strategies, experiences and core curricula through a South-South collaborative network, thus maximizing their efforts to train generalist physicians within the context of primary health care.

This presentation draws on the goals of the UNMHCP and results from the first year of implementation of the AFaMEC project to provide the audience with one strategy to build the human resources capacity necessary to reach WHO's goal of Health for All.

Learning Objectives:

1) Describe UNMCHP and AFaMEC’s approach to improving access to basic health services. 2) Understand this strategy for developing primary health care infrastructures in low-income countries and list 5 key elements of the approach.
• Appreciate the strategic value of South-South collaborations. 4) Identify areas of their work where a South-South collaboration could be useful.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered