This is NOT a April fool hoax nor a satire, but shall
explain to you how one Million Community Health Workers can be produced and deployed
across sub-Saharan Africa until 2015:
“We are launching a new campaign that aims to
expand and accelerate community health worker programs in sub-Saharan African
countries, scaling them up to district, regional, and national levels to meet
the health-related Millennium Development Goals. With the use of the latest
communications technology and diagnostic testing materials, these frontline
workers link the rural poor to the broader healthcare system of doctors,
nurses, hospitals and clinics.
The new campaign will work with governments and aid
agencies to finance and train the cadre of health workers, each of whom would
serve an average of 650 rural inhabitants, at an estimated cost of $6.58 per
patient per year. this adds up to an estimated $2.5 billion, which includes
funding already being spent by NGOs and governments on these programs. These
estimates fall within projected governmental health budgetary constraints and
are within the boundaries of donor assistance already pledged and anticipated.
How it works:
Point-of-care
diagnosis: Biomedical
technology has now produced rapid home test kits for malaria and HIV diagnosis,
sputum collection for the detection of tuberculosis by genetic amplification,
and pregnancy tests. These innovative instruments have enormous potential for
impacting healthcare provision in the developing world, especially at the
periphery of the health system and in rural areas.
Scalable supervision: Broadband access and smartphones can link
community health workers to the national health system and allow for real-time
disease surveillance, child and maternal health monitoring, mobile training,
supply chain management and capturing of vital events.
Standardized
care: Arming lay
health workers with consistent supplies of life-saving medicines and
easy-to-follow treatment protocols guarantees a minimum quality of services
delivered to these clients. Active care and disease detection according to
rigorous guidelines has greater benefit to the formal health system than the
usual passive case detection and referrals to upper levels of care.
Rapid
training: There is
persuasive evidence that short-term intensive trainings on the most critical
competencies for community healthcare delivery can be effective for deploying
on-the-ground, functional frontline health workers at scale, without a large
initial time lag between recruitment and deployment.”
Thomas Schwarz, Medicus Mundi International Network
Published as editorial in: MMI Network News, April 2013
Reference:
-
The text of this post is taken from the “about us” page of the One Million
Community Health Workers campaign http://1millionhealthworkers.org/about-us.
The campaign was launched at the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2013.
Notes by TS:
- The fact sheet of the campaign lists the following partners: GAVI Alliance, Glaxo Smith Kline, Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, RESULTS, Roll Back Malaria, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) UNAIDS, UN Broadband Commission for Digital Development, United Nations, Executive Office of the Secretary-General, USAID, the World Bank. The full list of partners also shows those directly interested in the deal, mainly IT and diagnostics industry.
- The following alternative titles for this editorial were finally dropped for the sake of political correctness: (1) High-tech, low skills, good money (2) It's the economy, stupid (3) Warning: This medicine may affect your health (system)
- Recent articles promoting the One Million Community Health Workers campaign include: 1 million community health workers in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015. Prabhjot Singh and Jeffrey D Sachs in: The Lancet, 29 March 2013; Deployment of community health workers across rural sub-Saharan Africa: financial considerations and operational assumptions. Gordon C McCord, Anne Liu & Prabhjot Singh in: Bulletin of the WHO, April 2013
- Next week is World Health Workers Week: “Moving toward Universal Health Care depends upon everyone having access to a skilled, motivated, supplied and supported health worker within a robust health system.”
- Looking forward to the long expected publication of WHO guidelines on scaling up and transforming health workers education later on this year. See www.who.int/hrh/education/initiatives
- To state it again clearly: this is NOT a satire. Your feedback is most welcome and will be published here.
