In The News

2010 Infectious Diseases Summit Concludes in Dar es Salaam

April 16, 2010, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Friday marked the end of Accordia's Infectious Diseases Summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The event was a success, with attendees spending two days addressing challenges to long-term healthcare capacity-building in Africa. This is the final installment in the three-part series of reports from Accordia's 2010 Summit.

The final sessions of the Accordia Global Health Foundation’s third annual Infectious Diseases Summit were sober but hopeful. Opinion was strong that effectively evaluating and measuring the impact of programs to improve healthcare worker capacity was critical to long-term efforts to achieve success, but everyone was quick to admit the somewhat daunting challenges that accompany that goal. 

But there are examples out there, some that were presented at the Summit and others that were alluded to, that can provide guidance – many from other fields like agriculture and education – and there was total agreement that no matter how hard the task may be, it is one that must be accomplished. And it doesn’t need to be done alone. In fact, there was strong consensus that if we in the healthcare capacity-building world are all contributing, we must also be collaborating and pushing in the same direction to be most effective.

Possibly the most common theme expressed throughout the Summit was the critical need in Africa for more and better bandwidth. Technology is getting better and fiber-optic cables are being put in place, but progress is painfully slow. As a result, so many of the things that we now take for granted in developed countries, like distance learning opportunities, easy access to new information, and long-distance mentoring, are incredibly difficult. 

The ultimate goal of educating healthcare workers, whether in pre-service training or as part of an intensive effort of continuing education, is to improve the health of communities across Africa. We can do that by building positive-practice environments; scaling up training in ways that improve the medical schools, their graduates, and the community; and keeping the programs going as they are proven to be effective and adjusting ones that are less than effective to make them better.