We had a virtual workshop 4-7 pm (Central African Time) on Wednesday, Thursday & Friday 9-11th September 2020 with the theme “Building Teamwork for Primary Health Care in Africa”. It was open to anyone interested but was targeted towards country leaders of participating organisations of AfroPHC.
Dr. Prosper Tumusiime, Health Systems Strengthening Team Leader from WHO AFRO opened the Workshop. The workshop was in three-hour sessions each day. In each session, there was a moderated plenary discussion in the first hour. We then moved to group discussions of ±10 participants in the next hour and returned to give feedback in the last hour. Links will be in the workshop webpages open to registrants. To ensure an interactive and engaging process we will bridge movement within sessions by 1-2 short videos and/or virtual games of 10-15min. It was a lot of fun, with 350+ registered and ±100 participating daily. Various leaders in PHC across Africa were online: family doctors from WONCA Africa, clinical officers from the African Network of Associate Clinicians, family nurse practitioners from the Association of African Advanced Nurse Practitioners, nurse leaders from the International Council of Nurses, public health practitioners from the African region of Towards Unity for Health, health educators/researchers from AfreHealth, mulitdisciplinary team members from AfriPEN, community health worker / community leaders from AMREF and a variety of other key stakeholders.
The question guiding the first session was “Who are we? Getting to know the ambulatory primary health care (PHC) team in Africa“. This laid the basis for the next two sessions asking the questions: “What does the community expect from ambulatory PHC service delivery in Africa?” and “Who should be part of the PHC team, how should the PHC team work in ambulatory PHC service delivery in Africa and what is need to support them?” We deliberately focused on PHC outside the hospital by using the term “Ambulatory”, which means ‘walking’ (vs. sleeping). In order to move away from presentations, the plenary was a moderated discussion between representatives of key organisations supporting AfroPHC. Some panellists and participants provided us short videos/presentatiins sharing their perspective on these three questions in advance.
We hope to emerge with a statement that will be issued in advance of the UN General Assembly later in September. You can be part of this movement. We hope to develop AfroPHC 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 approach to delivery.
See the detailed Programme
See the great Resources from the Workshop
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3