Capacity Building

Amref Health Africa in Uganda has a robust Capacity Building Program. The program boasts both e&m Learning interventions. These projects, designed for Nurses and Midwives have four objectives, which are:

• To strengthen the capacity of MoEST, MoH, UNMC and the Nursing & Midwifery training institutions in Uganda to be able to develop, implement, monitor and sustain an effective eLearning and eCPD program.

• To increase awareness among relevant stakeholders on the availability, utility and applicability of the eLearning approach as a solution to providing CPD and upgrading skills for nurses and midwives in the country.

• To support Nursing & Midwifery training institutions to provide quality eLearning for nurses and midwives in the country.

• To generate evidence through operational research for advocacy of future eLearning approaches for upgrading skills of nurses and midwives in the country.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) a UK based, leading global pharmaceutical company, has committed to reinvest 20% of their profits back into improving the healthcare infrastructure in the world’s Least Developed Countries. This investment contributes to a wider goal across all of our community investment programs to improve access to healthcare for 20 million under-served people by 2020 (vs. 2012).

Based on that, Amref Health Africa has collaborated with GSK to speed up the training of more midwives and nurses to a diploma (registered) level to help improve the maternal and child health situation of the rural based and disadvantaged populations in Uganda. In 2012, the Upgrading of Midwives project begun with four (4) nursing schools, realising the upskilling of 56 midwives in 2014 under a budget of $606,189. In the subsequent years of 2015-2018, the project has grown to 12 implementing nursing & midwifery schools and has so far realised the upskilling of 278 midwives to registered level while operating on a meagre budget of $449,756 for the period 2015-2020.

Amref Health Africa in Uganda and in U.S.A, have partnered with Johnson and Johnson, a leading global pharmaceutical company and the Uganda Nurses and Midwives Council (UNMC) to offer pioneering Continuous Professional Development (CPD) short courses to Nurses and midwives in Uganda using the eLearning approach. Johnson and Johnson pharmaceuticals provided $490,000 financial support towards 2 phases of implementing eCPD for Nurses and Midwives in Uganda.

In Uganda, CPD is the key approach to inservice training (IST) of the health workforce. A national IST strategy was developed in 2001. This strategy was developed to support the health services’ goals of the National Health Policy I and the Health Sector Strategic Plan (HSSP) II. Several approaches are being implemented in Uganda to provide CPD.

The main approaches currently include: short courses, seminars, workshops, meetings, conferences, support supervision, and distance learning. Output 3 of the National Plan for Continuous Professional Development of Health professionals seeks to put in place a set of innovations to make CPD available to learners and places emphasis on improving the coverage of CPD, taking into consideration evolving new technologies, and self-instructional approaches that include electronic based delivery of CPD (e/mLearning).

Amref Health Africa in Uganda and the UNMC agreed to start with three short online courses:

1) Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neo-natal Care (BEmONC) for midwives
2) Customer Care & Professionalism (CCP) for both nurses and midwives
3) The Nursing Process (NP) for both nurses and midwives

The following was the achievement as of May 2018:

• 2,055 nurses and midwives have successfully enrolled for, and completed CPD courses.
• 840 nurses and midwives have successfully completed BEmONC
• 626 nurses and midwives have successfully completed CCP
• 589 nurses and midwives have successfully completed NP