From 28th to 30th March 2023, the African Health Observatory Platform held its third face-to-face meeting in Nairobi, Kenya.
The three-day event brought together delegates from AHOP National Centres in Senegal, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, as well as representatives from the AHOP Advisory Group, WHO’s Regional Office for Africa (AFRO), the European Observatory on Health Systems & Policies and the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE).
Joining the meeting for the first time, representatives from the health ministries and WHO country offices from across the five AHOP countries also attended the meeting.
Participants discussed the progress of the platform and set out plans for production of AHOP outputs and activities which centre on the theme ‘re-engineering health systems’. In 2023, AHOP National Centres will be completing policy briefs, a comparative study on community health systems, and chapters of AHOP’s Country Health Systems and Services Profiles (CHSSP).
The national centres shared feedback on their experiences and lessons-learned on developing AHOP policy briefs. Since the last platform meeting in Dakar, the platform has published a policy brief on disruptions to essential health services during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.
More AHOP policy briefs are in the pipeline for 2023. These include: Optimizing the Ethiopian Health Extension Programme, Disruptions to Immunization Services Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Senegal and The Role of Community Health Workers in COVID-19 Home-Based Care: Lessons Learned from Rwanda.
This year, the platform will hold its first set of cross-cutting policy dialogues. Similar to the cross-cutting policy briefs published in 2021, AHOP cross-cutting dialogues will provide a regional perspective on key policy issues relating to the health systems theme of the platform. These dialogues give the opportunity for policymakers, experts and stakeholders from across the five AHOP countries to discuss evidence and policy options to address these issues.
In addition to the cross-cutting dialogues, a new wave of cross-cutting policy briefs will be developed in 2023. During the meeting in Nairobi, Ministry of Health representatives added great value to deliberations on selecting key cross-cutting topics that target the policy priorities of each national context.
As part of the event, participants also had the opportunity to tour Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) where the AHOP Kenya National Centre is based.
