Invest more in specialized Healthcare skills, EAC Partner State urged
East African Community Partner States have been asked to invest more money in specialized skills of their health workforce.
The EAC Deputy Secretary General (Productive and Social Sectors), Hon. Jesca Eriyo, said increased investment would enable the Partner States to effectively narrow the historical gaps in the health workforce and predictively address future needs.
Hon. Eriyo was addressing delegates from the five Partner States when she officially opened the 1st EAC Regional Meeting on the Operationalization of “The Multi-National EAC Regional Centres of Excellence for Skills and Tertiary Education in Higher Medical and Health Sciences, Treatment and Research Programme” at the EAC Headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
The five Centres of Excellence by location in the Partner States are the: EAC Regional Kidney Institute (Kenya); EAC Regional Heart Institute (Tanzania); EAC Regional Cancer Centre (Uganda); EAC Regional Nutritional Sciences Institute (Burundi), and; EAC Regional Centre of Excellence in Biomedical Engineering, eHealth and Health Rehabilitation Sciences (Rwanda).
Hon. Eriyo said the region now needs to quickly and effectively operationalize the various EAC Centres of Excellence to address the existing gaps in human resources for health including: inadequate numbers and quality of faculty; insufficient and low quality teaching, treatment and research infrastructure, equipment and facilities; inadequate incorporation of research evidence into training programmes, and; inadequate number and mix of highly skilled specialists in service delivery points and research.
The EAC officials said the Centres of Excellence provide the Community with an opportunity to better confront the unusual burden of disease being faced by its populations, namely: communicable diseases, nutritional, and maternal and child health complications; rise in incidences of non-communicable diseases, and; the spread in diseases associated with globalization and changing ecosystems, for instance, pandemics.
She said synergy among the Partner States would enable the region to attain the right mix in the numbers and skills of the health workforce.
“Working synergistically as a united region will help us to better harness human resources and capabilities in the Partner States and relevant EAC Organs and Institutions. The Centres will benefit from and contribute towards the ongoing regional efforts to harmonize training, practice and licensing of health professionals as well as other aspects of the EAC Common Market Protocol including the free movement of professionals and services,” said Hon. Eriyo.
Speaking at the forum, Dr. Caroline Jehu-Appiah, Principal Economist at the African Development Bank (AfDB), said the project was a testimony of the Bank’s continuous cooperation with regional economic communities and the Governments of Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania in many development sectors including Health, Education and Social Protection.
“The overall objective of the project is to address shortages in highly skilled professionals in biomedical specialties to enhance East Africa’s competitiveness. The project’s Phase 1 will support creation of a network of Centres of Excellence in biomedical sciences and engineering – Nephrology and Urology in Kenya, Oncology in Uganda, Cardiology in Tanzania and Biomedical Engineering and eHealth in Rwanda,” said Dr. Jehu-Appiah.
The AfDB official said the second objective of the project was to support the EAC provide overall project coordination, develop regional protocols, undertake labour market analysis and hold annual fora in the target countries.
“Whereas we are more or less on track with the establishment of the centres of excellence in the four beneficiary countries, we have not moved forward at all with the regional integration component of this project. It is for this reason this project was convened, bringing executing agencies and Project Coordination Units to work out the modalities for the implementation of the regional integration component,” she said.