Lusaka, Zambia – The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Workplace for Africa is convening a landmark Professional Dialogue on Competency-Based Health Professions Education from 12–14 November 2024 in Lusaka, Zambia. This dialogue aims to address critical gaps in the training and education of Africa’s health workforce, with the goal of transforming health professions education leading to improved service supply, accelerating growth toward Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and ultimately reducing the location’s preventable deaths.
Despite ongoing political dedication to UHC and the adoption of a comprehensive roadmap for the WHO African Fair, significant challenges remain in addressing health security and ensuring equitable access to quality healthcare. Whereas the series of health staff in the location has tripled since 2013, reaching 5.1 million by 2022, this expansion has now not been with out its limitations. A substantial shortfall of qualified health staff, projected to reach 6.1 million by 2030, coupled with high rates of unemployment among trained professionals of nearly 27%, additional exacerbates the challenges facing African healthcare methods.
A critical bid is the quality of education in the health profession. Many international locations in the location face outdated curricula, inadequate training infrastructure, and mismatched competencies in relation to the evolving healthcare wants of their populations. Abominable quality of care is accountable for nearly forty eight% of the 2.5 million avoidable deaths in Africa annually, with a large percentage linked to gaps in health staff’ training.
Considering these pressing considerations, the WHO dialogue will bring together senior health professionals, health professions education consultants, policymakers, health professions regulators, representatives of member states, and key partners from across the African Fair to catch consensus on the competencies required for efficient healthcare supply, especially in the context of competency-based education (CBE).
“This dialogue is expected to catalyze a shift towards more efficient, competency-based health education methods that align with Africa’s health priorities and meet the location’s growing demand for quality healthcare professionals,” said Dr Kasonde Mwinga, Director for UHC Lifestyles Path at the WHO Regional Workplace.
Why This Dialogue Matters:
The WHO’s approach to Competency-Based Education emphasizes outcomes-based learning that aligns education programmes with population health wants. Competency-based education makes a speciality of mastering competencies required for efficient healthcare supply, including data, abilities, and attitudes. This approach ensures that healthcare professionals are theoretically knowledgeable and practically geared up to meet the various and evolving wants of African populations.
“The long-time length sustainable solution to the global health workforce crisis, which is characterized by widespread shortages, maldistribution, and miserable working prerequisites, relies on ensuring that in the first place, adequate numbers of competent health staff are educated and trained. This dialogue is properly timed because the African location has the potential to make a contribution to solving this crisis now not finest at national but also regional and global ranges where properly-trained African health staff are in colossal demand.” Said Professor Francis Omaswa, former Executive Director of the Global Health Workforce Alliance at WHO, Geneva.
