23rd April, 2010
AMREF, the Anderson School at UCLA (University of California in Los Angeles) and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) have developed an e-learning programme to enhance the management capacities of HIV and AIDS organisations in Kenya. Launched on April 15, 2010 in partnership with Kenya’s National AIDS Control Council (NACC), the programme will be used to build the capacities of 7,000 NACC managers in effective health leadership and management.
The e-learning programme builds on the successful one-week training programme that the Management Development Institute (MDI), run by AMREF and UCLA, has been offering in Kenya, Ghana and later this year in South Africa. J&J have been supporting the programme since 2006.
The guest of honour at the launch, Acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of State for Special Programmes Mr Moses Gitari, said the Government is keen to harness the benefits of AMREF’s experience in training health personnel through eLearning.
The Ministry’s vision, he said, is to have a safer, sustainable and resilient society in order to be able to achieve Kenya’s Vision 2030. “Kenya has made great strides in reducing the stigma associated with HIV, and as a result more people are voluntary being tested for the virus. So far, 56 per cent of Kenyans know their status, while the government’s goal is to reach 90 per cent,” the PS said.
But there is still so much more to be done, he added. At present, there are 1.4 million people living with HIV in Kenya, while 2.5 million have died from HIV-related illnesses. “We must find ways of delivering quality services if we are to deal successfully with this national disaster.”
Acting Director of NACC, Mr Dennis Kamuren, said the council had identified capacity gaps in implementation and management of projects and embarked on a two-pronged approach to tackle them. The first, he said, is by adopting AMREF’s Maanisha model on a national level to strengthen management of community-based organisations working in the field of HIV and AIDS. (Through Maanisha, which means ‘give meaning to’, AMREF works with over 700 Civil Society Organisations across Kenya, strengthening their capacities in technical, financial and organisational management of HIV interventions, and equipping them with advocacy and fundraising skills.) The second is through the new eLearning MDI (eMDI) programme, which targets various levels of personnel in NACC, from secretariat and senior management staff, to regional, district and constituency managers. For both approaches, AMREF will be the coordinating agency and quality assurance provider.
"With the launch of the eMDI, world-class management education can now be delivered to so many more leaders of HIV/AIDS organisations dedicated to treatment, care, support and prevention,” said Prof Victor Tabbush of The Anderson School at UCLA. “The potential impact of this programme on the quality and length of the lives of those infected and affected by this dreadful disease can be enormous as these leaders deploy their newly developed management and leadership skills to enhance the effectiveness of their organisations."
“Johnson & Johnson is truly privileged to support such a unique partnership between world-class organisations, AMREF and UCLA, that have over the years developed top-notch leaders and managers,” said Rene Kiamba, Manager, Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies Contribution Fund, Sub-Saharan Africa. “We have already seen hundreds of managers in HIV and AIDS across Africa transformed by the core MDI through these partners, and now the e-MDI makes this blue-chip programme available more widely. We are delighted that NACC has agreed to use this programme to train their managers.”
AMREF’s Director for Capacity Building, Dr Peter Ngatia, said the eMDI project had brought together three great institutions – the Anderson School at UCLA, a world-class training school; AMREF, a tested and proven health development African organisation; Johnson & Johnson, a company committed to supporting programmes that build health care capacity; and through NACC, the Kenya Government, which is dedicated to eradicating HIV.
“We at AMREF are delighted to be associated with an initiative whose primary aim is to address leadership and management for health managers in Kenya,” said Dr Ngatia. “We are humbled to see a concept we grappled with only three years ago become accepted as the modus operandi for scaling up, skilling and retooling the health workforce in leadership and management. In this we relive the words of our Founder, Sir Michael Wood, who once said that ‘AMREF uses the tools of our times to deliver services where they are needed most’. Sir Wood used a single engine plane to take health to the most remote corners of the continent. Today we use ICT – the tools of our times – to take medical education to the remotest corners of our country, and indeed our continent, and to make learning available to all, not a preserve of only those who can access the classroom.”
The eMDI, said Dr Ngatia, aims to address the severe shortage of health workers by providing technical and management skills, including financial management, organisational planning, monitoring and evaluation, human resources management and health information management. “The eMDI aims to provide these skills all in one package, which the health manager can take at his own time and at 20 per cent the cost of what it would cost in a workshop or classroom setting.”
Dr Ngatia thanked UCLA for its support in developing the eMDI content and for joining with J&J to provide the funding and strategic oversight for its programme. The eMDI has been customised for the target audience, while navigation has been made easy to enable even those will minimal ICT skills to access the information. “AMREF appreciates the support of NACC and Ministries of Health, UCLA, J&J, and all development partners who support AMREF’s vision for ‘better health for Africa’.”
Others who attended the function included the chairperson of NACC, Prof Mary Getui, Prof Al Osborne and Dr Eric Tonui of UCLA, the Country Director of AMREF in Kenya, Mette Kjaer, and Mr Michael Mills, a lead economist at the World Bank’s Kenya Country Office.
