African countries face formidable public health challenges, including declining or stagnating life expectancy at birth, a high burden of communicable diseases such as HIV&AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis; an increasing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and injuries; resource constraints; sub-optimal health system performance and low investment in public health research. Public health functions are the silent yet critical element of a comprehensive approach to disease prevention, health promotion and protection, and include mechanisms that support intersectoral action to address the social determinants of health. Public health professionals also have planning, management, monitoring, evaluation and research competencies that can meaningfully contribute to the agenda of health system strengthening. The active participation of these professionals in the public health sector is critical to optimise the functioning of the health system and to ensure that health inequities are addressed and that global health targets are met.
At the coming PHASA conference in Cape Town a workshop will debate and discuss how to increase the investment by African governments in public health and capacity building.
The main aims of the workshop are to:
The target audience of the workshop are policymakers, Public Health Professionals, Public Health Training Institutions. Please join us at the discussion by attending the workshop at the conference.
Posted in PHASA news
I would love to attend the workshop
Make sure you register for this via the conference secretariat Mandy.Salomo@mrc.ac.za