Strengthen health systems
Despite an increase in health spending in Africa, many people still have limited access to good quality health care, especially in remote and rural areas. The burden of diseases such as HIV, TB, and malaria as well as lack of health workers, organizational, and managerial failures have all had a devastating effect.
Most of the funding received for health in Africa has been targeted at major diseases such as malaria and HIV. While there has been some improvement in prevention and treatment of these diseases, health care service as a whole continues to suffer. Maternal mortality is increasing and life expectancy is getting worse in many African countries.
Greater emphasis is placed on curative health care in hospitals and health centers in major towns and cities, rather than education for prevention and basic treatment in poor rural and urban communities.
AMREF's comprehensive approach focuses on the different components needed to deliver effective health care, including formal health workers, community health workers, laboratories, and drug supplies.
For example, it’s no good fighting HIV/AIDS solely by pumping money into anti-retroviral drugs. An adequate number of qualified health workers must be in place to administer them. Good systems need to be in place for distributing these drugs beyond major towns and cities. Communities also need to know how HIV/AIDS can be prevented.
We are training health workers at all levels across Africa, educating communities about health prevention, and improving the management of health services.
AMREF’s strategy focuses on strengthening health systems to ensure that they better serve the needs of poor and vulnerable communities. In order to do this, they must place people at the center and ensure wider use of local knowledge. AMREF gives communities the skills, knowledge, and confidence to demand the health services they deserve and supports national, regional, and local health authorities to provide them.
AMREF is also improving laboratory services across East Africa and training laboratory technicians, assuring better diagnosis of illnesses, especially in rural areas.
Meanwhile, we are strengthening the systems used to gather health information from the community level, right up to the national level. This ensures that available health care better corresponds to people’s needs.
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