SURG-Africa participation to the 2nd African Forum for Research and Education in Health (AFREHEALTH)

SURG-Africa researchers, Mweene Cheelo representing Zambia and Adinan Juma from the Tanzania team took part to the 2nd AFREhealth Symposium.

​The African Forum for Research and Education in Health (AFREhealth, 6-8th August 2018, Durban, South Africa) brings together health professionals from different disciplines across Africa and elsewhere to share experiences in health education, research and practice. The theme for this year’s symposium was achieving universal health coverage through health professions education, research and quality service delivery.

Dr Mweene Cheelo together with the other speakers from his session

​Mweene’s contribution focused on illustrating the multiple facets of district level surgery provision in Zambia. During his oral presentation, based on a series of interviews with non-physician clinicians working in district level hospitals, he showcased the lessons learned from the Medical Licentiate Programme in Zambia with regards to task-shifting in surgery. The presentation attracted considerable interest as members of the audience came from countries also experiencing health workforce shortages. Later on, he gave a poster presentation in which he illustrated changes from 2013 to 2016 in surgical capacity at district level hospitals in Zambia. The key finding from this presentation was the fact that the volume of surgery did not change between the two time points despite a significant increase in numbers of surgical providers in the surveyed facilities.

SURG-Africa Mweene Cheelo presenting our latest findings

​Adinan’s poster presentation outlined the main findings from the situational analysis undertaken by our team last year in Tanzania. The focus of his presentation was on illustrating the surgical capacity of Tanzanian district-level health facilities.