Cochrane Africa: a network of evidence-informed health-care decision making across sub-saharan Africa

Abstract

Cochrane Africa is a network of researchers and health stakeholders who aim to support the use of high quality Cochrane evidence to improve health outcomes in Africa. It comprises a coordinating centre in South Africa, a Francophone hub directed from Cameroon, a Southern and Eastern Africa Hub directed from South Africa and a West Africa Hub directed from Nigeria. The network supports the engagement with healthcare decision makers to guide priorities, production of high quality context-relevant Cochrane systematic reviews, capacity building to conduct and use reviews, dissemination of evidence, knowledge translation, partnerships for evidence-informed healthcare and the creation of opportunities to expand the network.

Cochrane Cameroon: bringing cochrane to francophone sub-Saharan Africa

“…All are part of the Cochrane Africa Network, formally established in 2017. Cochrane Cameroon is based in the Centre for Development of Best Practices in Health, at the Yaoundé Central Hospital in Cameroon, and is the base of the Francophone hub of Cochrane Africa [ 1 ]. The Francophone hub includes Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali and Senegal.…”

Moving towards universal health coverage: Strengthening the evidence ecosystem for the South African health system

“…[24] This should include a transparent process of declaring potential conflicts of interest, and public representation and deliberation in evidence-informed processes. [26] Good governance of evidence can be enacted through international entities such as the WHO guidelines groups, Cochrane [33] and national entities such as health policy analysis institutes or think tanks, [32,34] or entities to develop policies and clinical practice guidelines. [35] Evidence is processed on digital platforms such as GRADEpro [36] and MAGICapp [37] that facilitate data sharing across the evidence ecosystem and that use trustworthy standards and methods for decision support products such as clinical guidelines and health systems guidance.…”

<p>Revisiting public health programming in Nigeria: challenges and solutions</p>

“…All public health programs begin with the identification of key problems 2. Most of the time, this will be an agency-identified problem.…”