Last year the UN expanded their focus NCD areas to include mental health. With World Mental Health Day taking place this week it’s an opportunity to raise awareness of the issues and the responses taking place around the world. At PCI our partners have started to ask us to include elements of mental health more in our work supporting primary care. Then this year we really had the opportunity to put this into practice through working with Libyan clinicians.
At PCI we provide tailor-made support to build capacity in people and primary healthcare systems. However it can sometimes be hard to envisage what this actually means! This blog from Ms Miata Johnson, nurse and Public Health Officer with UNHCR in Tanzania, helps bring to life what we do. It provides some concrete examples of what our approach can help achieve for those working in more challenging primary healthcare settings.
As Heads of State and Government meet in New York to discuss Universal Health Coverage at the highest political level, we have co-authored a blog with Swasti on the essential leadership role of nurses in achieving universal health and wellbeing. We are calling for a shift in mindset and in countries’ regulatory framework, as well as an investment in training and support, to allow the nursing professionals to deliver the best value of care they are qualified to provide.
When I told friends and family I was going to Burundi, many of them had to reach for a map. This was my first project visit with Primary Care International. We were in Burundi to provide training in non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as hypertension and diabetes, to healthcare workers in the UNHCR health centres in both urban settings and in the camps.
PCI’s partnership with the Botswanan Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW), and Letshego Financial Services, really demonstrates the value of a cascade training approach. Read our guest blog from Dr Gontse Tshisimogo, a public health doctor working in the Botswanan MoHW, to hear about the impact so far.
Read about our project with the World Health Organisation in the Syrian Arab Republic where people living in a complex humanitarian crisis are able to access primary health care services to treat their NCDs.
A Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS) NCD screening event in Namibia showed that the prevalence of hypertension in adults is up to 40% in some areas. This means a resulting high incidence of stroke and heart disease. PCI is pleased to be supporting the MoHSS, through our Letshego funded Healthcare Innovation Programme, to … Read more …
Congratulations to Edilu Robert, a clinician from Arua, Uganda. Robert is the first of our NCD champions to obtain the certificate as part of our multi-country project with UNHCR. He tells of his experience of working in a refugee setting, and the importance of a team healthcare approach. “It’s a year now since I became … Read more …
Following on from the training that we did in Afghanistan last year – on the use of WHO Emergency Kits medicines and equipment for the management of key NCDs – it’s exciting to see our cascade training model successfully moving forward. Hear directly from Dr Abdul Bari Khuram, a doctor from Afghanistan and one of … Read more …
Adopting an iterative, pragmatic approach to guideline writing, the PCI clinical team has just concluded the co-writing of national level treatment guidelines for South Sudan. Drawing on a diverse bank of resources, our collaborative methodology enabled us to rapidly appraise the evidence base and produce high quality guidelines on a breadth of topics within just … Read more …
