one million health workers for Africa

If you didn't hear, the exciting news late last week in Davos, President Kagame, Jeff Sachs and Joe Jimenez, CEO of Novartis, announced the new effort to train and deploy one million community healthworkers across Africa by 2015. It's an ambitious timeline but really the only way we're going to effectively and sustainably meet the world's health goals (especially curbing maternal and U5 mortality).

The campaign is very much a for-Africa, by-Africa initiative and two days ago received the full support of the AU in Addis on Sunday. AU chair Haliemiriam, outgoing chair Yayi Boni and Paul Kagame will steer the AU's work on the campaign and the initiative will engage multilateral donors to support national healthworker deployments.

You can read more about the Davos announcement here:

http://1millionhealthworkers.org/2013/01/24/new-campaign-to-train-one-million-community-health-workers-for-sub-saharan-africa/

and the AU support here:

http://1millionhealthworkers.org/2013/01/28/the-african-union-endorses-new-community-health-worker-campaign-and-2013-roll-out/

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.