Financing Alliance for Health participated in the Africa Union and Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (A-CDC) High-Level Meeting on community health from 11th to 13th October 2022 at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The aim of meeting aimed to disseminate the continental community survey findings and advocate for the transformation of community health declarations and high-level decisions into action and call for political and financial commitment to strengthening community health workforce and systems towards achieving universal health coverage in Africa.
The meeting was attended by 134 representatives from 50 member states and 10 implementing and development partners in community health (Roche, UNICEF, Financing Alliance for Health, Living Goods, Last Mile Health, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, UNAIDS, Johnson and Johnson Foundation, World Health Organisation, and Skoll Foundation).
Samuel Gatimu FAH’s Country Engagement and Country Support Analyst – led the discussion on “Financing and sustaining community-based programs and systems in Africa”. The discussion emphasized the need for countries to Increase domestic resources for community health as per WHA 72.3 resolution “to allocate, as part of broader health workforce strategies and financing, adequate resources from domestic budgets and from a variety of sources, as appropriate, to the capital and recurrent costs required for the successful implementation of community health worker programs and integration of community health workers into the health workforce in the context of investments in primary health care, health systems, and job creation strategies, as appropriate”.
In addition, the discussion focused on key financing pathways for sustainable community health including costed implementation strategies, investment cases, capacity building on health financing, public finance management, resource mobilization, and Identifying opportunities for countries including the Africa Frontline First.
The key outcomes of the meeting included: (a) sensitizing representatives of member states on community health; (b) identification of community health champions to advocate for political support and resource allocations for community health workforce and programs (proposed by Senegal and Togo’s President); (c) formation of continental coordination mechanisms; and (d) launch of strategic partnership between A-CDC and IFRC to professionalize CHWs across 55 counties.
FAH was honored to be part of this noble meeting and present Its case on strengthening health systems in the continent