Health experts have advised African states to train enough health workers who can respond to the growing needs of their respective populations.

Prof. Francis Omaswa, the founder of African Centre for Global Health and Social Transformation (ACHEST), criticised universities and training institutions that are prioritising research and PhDs over training clinical health workers.

He was speaking during the 5th African Health Agenda International Conference (AHAIC), which ended on Wednesday in Rwanda's capital Kigali.

It is a biennial conference, jointly convened by Amref Health Africa, Rwanda's health ministry, African Union and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). 

This fifth edition was themed: 'Resilient health systems for Africa; Re-envisioning the future now'.

"If you have teachers who are not interested in clinical medicine but only in research, then the students will also follow that line and the community will not have the service that it needs," said 80-year-old Omaswa.

At the same conference, Dr. Githinji Gitahi, Group CEO of Amref Health Africa, suggested that the curriculum of the health workforce should contextualise the needs of the people.

He underlined that governments should allocate more funds for health workers.  

"When you are talking about the growing youth population, is that reflected in our training of the health workforce? Are the curriculums adopting to the needs of African continent?" asked Kenyan Gitahi, who is a medical doctor.

Dr. Ahmed Ogwell Ouma, the acting director of Africa CDC called for a need to invest and prioritise public health needs in Africa.

Citing the COVID-19 pandemic, Ebola and Cholera outbreaks, he said the experience that the African continent has gone through is a direct consequence of inadequate investment in public health.

The experts also called for a need to incorporate the One Health approach in disease prevention and control efforts.

Omaswa explained that the approach is combining veterinary medicine to human medicine, saying that with many diseases moving from animals to humans (zoonotic diseases), separating them could be a blunder.

Also weighing in, Ouma said they are supporting ministries of health and national public health Institutes to build the capacity while at the same time improving coordination for the prevention and control of zoonotic diseases across other critical areas of the health sector.

Rwanda's health minister, Dr. Sabin Nsanzimana said it is high time African states increased their capacity for epidemiological surveillance systems.

She said they can do so by adopting the One Health approach and other cross-sector and crossborder co-operation, build research capacity at the human, animal, ecosystem interface, as well as train and retain competent human resource for health to deal with emerging and re-emerging diseases and non-communicable diseases.

Meanwhile, Ouma said Africa CDC is supporting countries to establish and operationalise public health emergency operations centres, which will be the central coordinating hubs for disease surveillance and response coordination across Africa.

He noted with concern that effects of global warming and climate change are contributing factors to many health emergencies and diseases that affect Africa.

‘’Not only can disasters such as floods, drought or other extreme weather patterns, have devastating effects on our socio-economic fabric, these disasters also result in infrastructure damage and economic losses due to business disruption and malnutrition," said Ouma.