|
Welcome from Samia Khatun, Head of Programmes at King’s Global Health Partnerships
|
|
I am delighted to welcome you to KGHP’s summer edition newsletter. It’s hard to believe that it has already been seven months since I joined, which has flown by!
We continue to be impacted like many others in the sector by the changing funding landscape resulting from USAID and FCDO cuts. We continue to respond and adapt to these changes, for example in this quarter we contributed evidence of the impact of aid cuts through a BOND survey, informing sector-wide evidence generation of the devastating impact of the cuts. We have also focussed on developing our relationship with partners working on health system strengthening, through participation at the UK-Africa Health Summit in March and participation at the World Health Assembly in May.
In April, I had the opportunity to travel to Somaliland, my first trip for KGHP! Travelling with KGHP’s Director, Somaliland Programme Manager and a WHO Quality Improvement consultant, the main objective was to support the Ministry of Health Development (MoHD) to facilitate a workshop to finalise the National Quality Policy and Strategy (NQPS). I was especially impressed with the level of engagement and commitment from the stakeholders involved in the workshop. We also used the visit to strengthen the partnership between KGHP and MoHD and to build relationships with new Ministerial staff following the recent reshuffle, after last year’s elections. We held meetings with various partners and stakeholders, such as Taiwan Medical Mission, Population Services International, Qatar Charity, FCDO, Edna Adan Hospital and University and the Hargeisa Group Hospital. The visit to Edna Adan Hospital to meet Edna was a particular personal highlight for me. Overall, it was a very productive and insightful trip, and it was wonderful to see KGHP's work on the ground.
Aside from the NQPS work there have been lots of great things happening over the last couple of months, some of which are featured in the newsletter including announcement of a new grant to improve maternal healthcare in Somaliland, Masters' student research in The Gambia, and a brilliant volunteer reflection piece from our Zambia frontline health workers wellbeing project to name a few.
Happy reading!
|
|
Latest News from our Health Partnerships
|
|
King's Global Health Partnerships secures new funding to improve maternal healthcare in Somaliland
We are excited to announce new funding from the Alborada Trust to support a two-year project to improve the quality of maternity care at Hargeisa Group Hospital, Somaliland’s main public referral hospital. Working in partnership with the hospital, the Ministry of Health Development (MoHD) and NHS midwives and obstetricians, the project will strengthen health worker capacity, improve the systems and processes to provide care, and implement national guidelines for the prevention and management of the leading causes of maternal death.
Read more about the project here
|
|
Reflections from Ndola: A hospital staff wellbeing project in Zambia
Dr Joe Poole, a Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the NHS has been supporting KGHP and our partners in Zambia on a project to support the psychological needs of frontline health workers in the maternity department of Ndola Teaching Hospital, where there has historically been a high prevalence of maternal and infant deaths, due to a range of socio-economic factors. In this article, Joe reflects on his experiences on the project and progress made so far.
Read Joe's reflections here
|
|
Global Health Master's students support research on postgraduate medical education in The Gambia
Each year, students on the MSc in Global Health at King's College London are given the opportunity to carry out their dissertation research on key projects being delivered by KGHP. This year, four projects were developed to deepen our understanding of aspects of the postgraduate medical training programmes in The Gambia. This research will inform our wider work on strengthening postgraduate medical education across our health partnerships.
Read more and meet the students in a short video here
|
|
KGHP launches online course with UN Global Surgery Learning Hub for Francophone health workers
We recently launched a step-by-step video guide in French, demonstrating how to use the WHO's Surgical Safety Checklist in a surgical setting. The guide is a free, short course hosted on SurgHub, the UN Global Surgery Learning Hub, designed to be used by surgical teams in low-resource settings. The 10-minute module was filmed with our health partners in Matadi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and sits alongside other surgical learning resources on the platform.
View the short video course here
|
|
Current Volunteering Opportunities
|
|
We are recruiting for the following expert volunteer posts:
Global Health Fellowship, Sierra Leone (in-country)
|
|
Meet the People behind the Partnerships
|
|
|
Congratulations to Dr Dan Youkee who has been awarded the Outstanding Thesis prize by King's Doctoral College for his thesis on The Impact of Stroke in Sierra Leone: Stroke register methodology in a low-income country setting.
Dr Youkee's research provided the first high quality evidence on stroke epidemiology and care in Sierra Leone, where severe strokes are affecting young, previously fully functional people and leading to high mortality and significant impact on health-related quality of care. Demonstrating the impact of stroke in Sierra Leone led to the Ministry of Health incorporating the establishment of stroke units nationwide into the Non-Communicable Disease Strategic Plan.
|
|
Help us to continue our work
|
|
|
If you would like to donate to the partnerships, please consider supporting us with a one-off or regular donation.
|
|
|
|
