The 15 member countries of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, have agreed to harmonise all their systems of administration governing their health services and medical studies to avoid differences between them.
ECOWAS (known in French as CEDEAO, Communauté économique des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest) has set up a consultation under its specialised regional agency the West African Health Organisation, or WAHO (Organisation Ouest Africaine de la Santé, OOAS), which is responsible for safeguarding the health of the community’s populations through the coordination of the policies of the member states, pooling resources, and cooperation between themselves and with other countries “to find solutions collectively and strategically to health problems of the sub-region”.
The member states of the community are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde (Cape Verde), Côte d’Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Togo.
The consultative process, set up this month (July) in Lomé, Togo, aims to harmonise health-related curricula, and marks an important step towards standardising medical practices and teaching methods throughout ECOWAS, reported Togonews, which is published by the government of Togo.
“It is very important for us to have harmonisation of everything to ensure a continuum in healthcare. When you move from one country to another, you will not feel as if you have crossed a frontier. The health system must be the same,” it reported Melchior Athanase Aissi, the director general of WAHO, saying at the opening of the consultation.
Healthcare manuals will be published in French, English and in Portuguese and distributed throughout all the ECOWAS countries, to guarantee all medical professionals undergo the same training, and make mobility and cooperation easier between the different nations, said Togonews.
Harmonising healthcare and medical education would provide advantages including equality of care, professional mobility and a reduction in disparities, it said. – Compiled by Jane Marshall.
Source: UAEU
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