A digital health coalition, Transform Health, has urged governments around the world to equip and support health workforces to be able to achieve universal health care.
A report that was released during the 2021 Digital Health Week, Transform Health stated, “Frontline health staff, including community health workers, should be adequately equipped, supported and remunerated to fulfil their critical role in the achievement of UHC.”
This call is on the back of a commitment by world leaders in 2019, to extend universal health coverage to everyone by 2030.
“…We reaffirm the right of every human being, without distinction of any kind, to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”, the world leaders stated in the political declaration of the high-level meeting on universal health coverage.
Transform Health has therefore called for health system managers and policymakers to “consult frontline health workers before introducing different digital approaches or technologies to ensure that innovations will increase the efficiency and impact of their work, and not create additional burdens. Effective management structures should be established to enable health workers to use digital technologies and data to improve health access and quality.”
In its other recommendations, Transform Health called on the governments of the world to put communities at the centre of digital health, design and implement digital health strategies that will deliver UHC, ensure strong regulation and legislation to create an enabling environment for digital transformation while protecting the rights and privacy of citizens, increase domestic and international investments to strengthen digitally-enabled PHC systems and empower communities, and create a global governance framework for health data.
Ghana to introduce first-ever national e-pharmacy in Africa – Bawumia
In November 2021, the vice president of Ghana, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, highlighted the government’s plans to establish the first-ever e-pharmacy on the African continent.
“Basically, the digital e-pharmacy platform will offer the opportunity to everyone through a mobile phone to upload your prescriptions and find out which pharmacies near you have the medicines. Secondly, you can compare the prices for the same drug offered by different prices so that you can buy from the lowest priced pharmacies, Dr Bawumia said at a public lecture at the Ashesi University in Ghana.
The e-pharmacy is expected to be launched before the end of 2021.
About Transform Health
Transform Health is a global coalition of organisations, individuals and institutions committed to achieving universal health coverage through the use of digital technologies and data.
It was formed in 2018 by a group of organisations who saw the need for a concerted long-term effort to harness the transformative benefits of digital technology and data to achieve the SDG target of Universal Health Coverage (UHC by 2030).
About the Digital Health Week
Digital Health Week is a global week of action to advocate for digital health and its critical role in providing health for all by 2030.
The week has been described as an opportunity for stakeholders, like professional bodies, the private sector, civil society, academia, governments and multilateral institutions to advocate for digital transformation in healthcare in their contexts in a concerted week of action.
Digital Health Week 2021 was held from November 30, 2021, to December 3, 2021.
Read the full report here.