AfroPHC

African Forum for Primary Health Care

Vision

African PHC service delivery under Universal Health Coverage (UHC) should be comprehensive, accessible, high quality, responsive to local needs, in partnership with communities and delivered by strong teamwork, training and supportive supervision.

Mission

To bring together the leadership of ALL health workers at the coalface in African primary care and to develop AfroPHC as the voice of the PC/PHC team, sharing resources and supporting each other in building the PHC team for UHC in Africa.

Strategic Objectives (2021-2025)

Engage and advocate with stakeholders on appropriate PHC human resources and strong PHC teamwork for UHC
Strengthen socially accountable PHC for communities in Africa
Support local and country level PHC teamwork across Africa
Capacitate PHC stakeholders at policy, management, clinical and health level
Build research and evidence for appropriate PHC human resources and strong PHC teamwork for UHC
Share information and communicate effectively to strengthen PHC teamwork and UHC across Africa.
Build AfroPHC as organisation

Membership

The African Forum for Primary Health Care (AfroPHC) came together in a three-day virtual workshop 4-7pm 9-11 ^th September 2020, with 398 registrants from 28 African countries and ±100 participants per day. See the details and founding AfroPHC Statement here. The African Forum for Primary Care (AfroPHC) currently has a membership of more than 1300 people from 64 countries (40 across the 54 countries in Africa). Most of the members (highest down) are from: Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Ghana, DR Congo etc.

The membership comes from a variety of professions and backgrounds (highest down): nurse, doctor, public health, family physician, pharmacist, manager, advocates, specialist, student, activist, non health government sector representatives, community health worker, social worker, educationist, allied health, clinical officer, scientists, dental professionals, environmental health practitioners, researchers, lab technician, nutritionist, psychologist, lawyer, ambulance driver, optometrist, and traditional healer.

AfroPHC”Call to Africa“

Abstract: The primary health care (PHC) system in Africa faces many challenges AND opportunities. To date, human resources for health in PHC are grossly insufficient in number, often inefficiently and inequitably distributed, lacking adequate training for delivering fully responsive and comprehensive frontline care and are treated inequitably within the health system. There has been a lack of solidarity among key role players in healthcare to create adequate PHC funding in Africa. Resources do not appropriately or adequately reach the frontline PHC service platform due to outdated service delivery and payment models. Patients experience PHC as numbers in a queue, with poor comprehensiveness, continuity, and coordination. Health workers are also treated like numbers in a bureaucracy that fragments and undermines training and service for integrated care around patient and population needs. However, opportunities abound with global PHC milestones, increasing political will for investment in PHC, and proven mechanisms for achieving a stronger workforce such as community health workers, clinical task-sharing, and the integration of family doctors into PHC. The African Forum for PHC (AfroPHC) has a vision for PHC and UHC that is team-based with skills mix appropriate to Africa, including family doctors, family nurse practitioners, clinical officers, community health workers and others that are empowered to take care of an empaneled population in high-quality people centred PHC. AfroPHC is making a call on stakeholders to develop and implement a regional forward-looking plan to 1) build robust PHC systems, 2) train, recruit and maintain a sufficient frontline PHC workforce, and 3) support PHC with appropriate financing. This can all come together easily in a nationally defined PHC contract using risk-adjusted blended capitation payment to decentralised PHC teams empanelled to enrolled populations, coordinated by district health services and easily administered at national or sub-national level for empowered public and private providers. Keywords: PHC workforce, PHC financing, PHC systems, PHC teamwork, PHC blended capitation, empanelment. See full article here.

See AfroPHC Governance

A key part of the strategy is build alliances and networks. We have reached out to a number of organisations that are pan-African or global in nature and very important to our mission to support AfroPHC. See list of AfroPHC Supporting Organisations. We set up an Advisory Board (up to 30 members and mostly from AfroPHC Supporting Organisations) to meet at least six monthly to review our work and build strong collaborations.