Our Clinical Director, Dr Mamsallah Faal-Omisore shared experiences from our work in WHO’s ‘NCD Hard Talks’ webinar series. With the focus on ‘Building an NCD Ready Workforce’, Mamsallah shared how PCI has supported the expansion of the breadth and depth of NCD care in a number of different settings by working with PHC health workers to improve their capacity to deliver good quality care.
Reducing the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) necessitates a transformation in how, and by whom, NCD services are delivered. This redistribution will see roles traditionally performed in hospitals shift to the community, to where people live and work and can most readily access services. Primary health care (PHC), long recognized for its contribution to health promotion and disease prevention, will be called upon to serve as a platform for NCD screening, early diagnosis, treatment, palliation and rehabilitation.
Such a shift will not be possible unless the PHC workforce is adequately equipped to meet the increased scale and scope of NCD care. This means not only bolstering the supply of PHC workers but optimizing the distribution of critical tasks among different cadres. Executing this transition requires unprecedented cooperation, multi-sectoral collaboration and regulatory action to ensure that quality of care is maintained.
This webinar session convened health system and workforce experts to examine what it will take to prepare the PHC workforce to take on the challenge of NCDs.
The meeting recording can be found here.