Deputy Secretary-General Josephine Ojiambo has urged the UK’s East African diaspora to work together to improve health care in the region. Dr Ojiambo, herself a Kenyan, told the 2nd UK-East African Healthcare Summit in London that as a physician she was heartened by in the diaspora’s commitment to make health a priority.
Deputy Secretary-General Josephine Ojiambo has urged the UK’s East African diaspora to work together to improve health care in the region. Dr Ojiambo, herself a Kenyan, told the 2nd UK-East African Healthcare Summit in London that as a physician she was heartened by in the diaspora’s commitment to make health a priority.
“As a member of the diaspora, we need to invest in healthcare,” she said. “We need to recognise health as an economic and business investment for socio-economic development. I urge you all to join government, civil society and others already working in East Africa to think how we can make healthcare-change and improve it a reality.”
Commonwealth Secretariat health adviser Dr Mbololwa Mbikusita-Lewanika set out the opportunities and challenges facing the region when it came to universal health coverage. She challenged health service providers and policy makers to find practical solutions to end health inequalities faced by most in the region.
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Dr Mbikusita-Lewanika said, “If we’re to achieve a sustainable policy for universal health coverage, then we need policy makers, governments, civil society, academia, the private sector and other stakeholders to take a hard look at, and find practical solutions to, the challenges, disparities and inequalities of having first class health services for the privileged few, side by side with third rate services for the majority.”
The summit’s chief guest, Dr Jane Aceng, Uganda’s minister of health, welcomed the alignment between the UK-Uganda Alliance’s objectives and her country’s national priorities.
The chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health, Lord Crisp, said that current evidence suggested that health employment was a multiplier of economic growth. He said that one-quarter of economic growth between 2000 and 2011 in low and middle-income countries was as a result of improvements in health.
Delegates were warned about a brain drain from East Africa. For example, 51,000 East African health workers were currently working America. But the summit was told that the Commonwealth Secretariat had previously supported capacity building in the East Central and Southern Africa Health community, particularly in nursing and midwifery. Dr Ojiambo said she was heartened by the development of specialist colleges in the region, which were building regional capacity, improving quality and addressing the challenges of brain drain.
Last year’s inaugural UK-East African Healthcare Summit concentrated on Uganda, while the 2nd focused on three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The idea for future summits is to include diaspora groups from other countries beyond the region.
