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Welcome from Laura Hucks, Director of King’s Global Health Partnerships
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Welcome to our first quarterly newsletter! We are hoping to give you a taster of some of our work to strengthen health systems across King’s Global Health Partnerships. This work is made possible because of the commitment of partners in Somaliland, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. Its success also relies on over 100 skilled volunteers from the UK’s National Health Service, particularly from the King’s Health Partners in South London.
It’s been a challenging year for everyone, but particularly for health workers, both here in the UK and in the countries where we work. International support has been limited for our African partners battling Covid-19 and the pandemic is not over. And yet we have a lot to celebrate! It was the twentieth anniversary of our partnership between King’s and Somaliland last year. Our programme of work to deliver systemic change in Higher Education for health professionals, Prepared for Practice, has delivered significant achievements which you can read about in this issue. In Sierra Leone, together with our partners at Connaught Hospital, we have worked to develop patient pathways and improvements in diagnosis and treatment of malaria. In DR Congo our work to strengthen surgical skills continues from strength to strength and in Zambia we have been working to develop a training programme to improve laparoscopic skills.
If you would like to get involved as a volunteer in our projects, please do get in touch. We would love to hear from you.
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Latest News from our Health Partnerships
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UK Aid cuts hit King’s Global Health Partnerships vital programmes
The recent cuts to the UK government’s overseas development assistance budget, by £4 billion, has had a direct impact on our health partnerships in Africa. Planned projects in Somaliland to improve care for 15,000 pregnant women and their babies, and the installation of solar power in operating theatres in the Democratic Republic of Congo have had to be halted because of the funding cuts.
Read more here
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Prepared for Practice: Training Somaliland’s Future Health Workers
As we enter the final phase of our flagship project in Somaliland, strengthening the quality of undergraduate education for health professionals, we look back at some of the successes from the last 12 months; from the launch of the first national, medical curriculum to teaching and examining 320 nursing, medical and midwifery students.
Read more here
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Reducing the Malaria Burden in Sierra Leone
We recently completed the Comic Relief and GSK-funded project, SHIFT, which focused on improving the quality of care for patients that suffer from fever, a major symptom of malaria. Working closely with our partners in Sierra Leone, we helped to improve patient access to malaria testing and treatment; train over 600 health workers in malaria diagnosis and fever management; and provide faster malaria testing through the introduction of a digital laboratory system.
Read more about the project and Download the SHIFT project impact report
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Covid-19 update from across our partnerships
Read the latest situation in our partner countries and how we are supporting their Covid-19 response efforts.
Read more here
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Research from King’s Centre for Global Health and Health Partnerships
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HELP NEEDED – Calling all former volunteers!
For her Global Health Master’s Dissertation, King’s College London student, Ms. Srinidhi Shyamkumar, is researching the impact of volunteerism on health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. She would love to hear from KGHP volunteers! She has designed a 10-minute anonymized questionnaire to find out about your role as a volunteer and the perceived impact of your contribution. If you would like to participate, please complete the questionnaire by 15 July 2021.
Click here to complete the survey
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Current Volunteering Opportunities
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We are recruiting for the following volunteer posts:
Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Zambia (remote and in-country support)
Senior Theatre Nurse, Zambia (remote and in-country support)
Covid-19 Response Volunteer Group, Democratic Republic of Congo (remote support)
Infection Prevention Control (IPC) and Covid-19 Response Volunteer Group, Somaliland (remote support)
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Meet the People behind the Partnerships
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For World Health Worker Week on April 5-9, we celebrated some of the inspiring health workers from across our health partnerships on our social media. You can see the feature on our Twitter stream #WHWWeek
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Help us to continue our work
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If you would like to donate to the partnerships, please consider supporting us with a one-off or regular donation.
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