In order to help build the clinical competencies of African PHC workers (especially doctors, nurse clinicians and clinical officers) we are a developing a curriculum framework for post-graduate diploma in Family Medicine/Primary Health Care.

See the modules and content areas below that we hope can stimulate work in this space. We have planned learning objectives essentially as “Assessing and managing common conditions of. ….. in PHC in Africa”. We share hours of learning time (that we will review) to frame the next steps of collecting useful national, African and global clinical/other guidelines (and later useful readings) in each area. Once we feel we have gathered the best of literature and trimmed to fit hours of time we will then together develop learning objectives per sub-section and lecture. It will also require understanding the learning process as we learn especially as this will be developed as an online course.

1. Family Medicine and Primary Health Care Theory [240 hrs Y1/Y2] including re-skilling on history and physical examination [60-80hrs], consultation approach [40-60hrs], family-and community-oriented primary care [30hrs], evidence-based medicine [20hrs], learning-teaching [20hrs], research-quality improvement ethics [20hrs], and ethical issues [30hrs].
2. Chronic and Priority Conditions [240 hrs over one year] including
   • Communicable Disease [60 hrs Semester 1/Y1] (incl. HIV, TB, COVID-19, Malaria, STIs, respiratory infections and other);
   • Non-Communicable Disease [60 hrs Semester 1/Y1]( (incl. various conditions in internal medicine – hypertension, diabetes etc.);
   • Mental Health [40hrs Semester 2/Y1]
   • Geriatric Care [30hrs Semester 2/Y1]
   • Palliative Care [20hrs Semester 2/Y1]
   • Occupational Health [20hrs Semester 2/Y1]
3. Clinical Practice [240hrs over one year, Semester 1 & 2 ], incl. Internal Medicine [40-60hrs], Surgery [40hrs], Pharmacology [20-40hrs], Dermatology-ENT-Ophthalmology [40hrs], Travel Medicine [40hrs], Mens -Sexual Health [40hrs]
4. Mothers-Newborns and Women’s Health, including pregnancy, labour and postnatal [60hrs], newborn baby [10hrs], women’s health including gynaecological and reproductive health [50hrs]
5. Child and Adolescent Health including growth and development within childhood and adolescence [40+hrs), nutrition and infective disorders within childhood and adolescence [40+hrs], system-based disorders within childhood and adolescence [10-20hrs], specialised disorders within childhood and adolescence [10-20hrs]
6. Violence and Trauma including Emergency Medicine/Orthopaedics [70hrs], Family Violence [20hrs], Clinical Forensics [5-10hrs], Sports Medicine [5-10hrs] and Anaesthetics [5-10hrs]
7. PHC Management including health systems and universal health coverage ([10hrs], practice/clinic/population management in primary care e.g., practice set up, human resources, finance, facility management-supply chain management, social marketing, eHealth etc [70hrs], health promotion and disease prevention in primary care [20hrs], and community-oriented and population health in primary care [20hrs]

We hope you can join some of these clinical groups when you join AfroPHC so that we can share this and you can help us build it further. These groups will hopefully develop working meetings, liaise with global groups and engage with WHO AFRO.