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| Abuja meeting to discuss community involvement in health service delivery
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Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (PANA) -
Health experts, including deans of Faculties
of Medicine and Health Sciences from 12 African
countries, will meet in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, 9-11 June 2009 to discuss the
use of the Community-Directed Intervention (CDI) strategy in
public health service delivery.
The meeting, being co-sponsored by the Ministries of Health and Education of Nig
eria and the country's National Universities Commission with World Health
Organization African Programme for River Blindness (Onchocerciasis) Control (WHO
/APOC), will also discuss plans to introduce the strategy into
the curriculum of nursing and medical schools across the continent.
The meeting is expected to produce a plan for medical and nursing schools in Afr
ica to pilot the teaching of this strategy, thereby building and strengthening
partnerships between health and education systems.
The Honourable Minister of Health of Nigeria, Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin, is exp
ected to declare the meeting open with his Education counterpart, Dr Sam
Egwu, who is expected to deliver the key note address.
Elaborating on the CDI strategy, APOC said in a statement obtained by PANA here
Thursday that in a continent where many countries are challenged by weak,
under-funded and under-resourced health systems, private-public partnership, com
munity participation in health care delivery and task shifting by health staff a
r
e
important initiatives to enhance efforts by African countries to achieve the Mil
lennium Development Goals.
It said the CDI strategy in health care delivery had proved to be a cost-effecti
ve strategy in multi-disease control, capacity building, empowerment of poor
communities, and strengthening of health systems.
Over 12 years, the WHO/APOC has been using this strategy to fight river blindnes
s with remarkable success.
This approach enables poor, hard-to-reach communities to select their own drug d
istributors and treat populations at risk annually with ivermectin, a safe drug
d
onated
by the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co Inc.
In the last three years, medical and scientific research by the WHO Special Prog
ramme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (WHO-TDR) has shown the CDI
strategy to be effective in the delivery of multiple health interventions, inclu
ding distribution of for the treatment of river blindness, insecticide-treated b
e
d nets, home management
of ivermectin, malaria and vitamin A supplementation.
WHO/APOC, in collaboration with the West African Health Organization (WAHO), has
developed a draft curriculum and training module for the CDI strategy based on
a
manual currently being used by over 100 projects in more than 20 African countri
es.
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| Ouagadougou - 04/06/2009 |
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