Medical Education: Meeting the Challenge of Implementing Primary Health Care in Sub-Saharan Africa

The essence, opportunities and threats to Advanced Practice Nursing in Sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review

“…By the middle of this century, the population of Africa will double from its current 1.2 billion people to about 2.4 billion people. Africa accounts for 41% of all births in the world resulting in about half of the SSA population being less than 18 years (Ahmed et al., 2011). By 2050, there will be nearly a billion children in Africa (O'Malley et al., 2014), constituting 37% of the population of children in the world (UNICEF, 2014).…”

“…The majority of the healthcare facilities and practitioners are located in the cities and towns, thus denying the larger proportion of the population who live in rural communities quality healthcare (Ahmed et al., 2011; Tong, 2015). Nannan et al.…”

“…Nursing training in SSA has been benchmarked on Western material and philosophy (Coetzee et al., 2016; Kolars et al., 2012). It is reasonably certain that the nurses produced from the neo-colonial curricula are less responsive to the special healthcare needs of SSA because the healthcare needs and challenges of SSA are different from those of the Western world (Ahmed et al., 2011; Coetzee et al., 2016). Apart from South Africa, all the APN initiatives in Africa were through foreign donors or institutions.…”

“…APN is necessary for the upscaling of primary healthcare in Nigeria. If nurses could prove themselves worthy of the expanded roles, there will be physician support.3(Ahmed et al, 2011), SSA “Medical education: meeting the challenge of implementing primary health care in Sub-Saharan Africa” Supporting PHC as a means of meeting SSA health needsPosition paperMedical education must be focused on the needs of the people served. Primary healthcare is best suited for the special health needs of Africa.Population is largely rural, healthcare facilities allocated at city and towns, access to health care difficult due to bad transport system, fastest growing world region with 2.4% growth rate, population expected to double in 30 years (2040), more than 40% of population earn less than $1 daily, half the population is less than 18yrs, rapid urbanization.…”

Advancing Physical Therapy Practice through Curriculum Revision: The Malawi Experience

“…The challenge was to revise the curriculum in a manner that conformed to the international standards defined by WCPT ( 16 ), but, also addressed the needs of Malawi ( 22 ). Curricular content needed to be useful for the people of Malawi and requests were made by stakeholders to include content on communicable disease, community-based rehabilitation, and victims of torture from the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi with refugees from Burundi, Rwanda, and, the D. R. Congo.…”