At a time when the world is warming up to a post-pandemic state of affairs, AUDA-NEPAD  is offering a hands-on approach on delivering healthcare through communities.

A two-day workshop has just ended in Accra with a call for the medical experts and participants to continue delivering on the so-called Project Bijimi.

A hausa name for "bull", the objective of the project is training and upskilling community healthcare workers to undertake key actions.

These include delivering diagnostic, treatment and other clinical services; assisting with appropriate utilisation of health services; provide health education and behaviour change motivation to community members.

Additionally, apart from recording and collecting data, there is the necessity of improving relationships between health services and communities; and providing psychosocial support.

Pressed on the necessity of Project Bijimi for the five pilot countries (Burundi; Central African Republic; Chad; Lesotho; South Sudan), AUDA-NEPAD's Dr Janet Byaruhanga explained that, for countries with deficient healthcare, community healthcare remains most practical way in which healthcare is delivered most efficiently.

Asked why the meeting was held in Ghana when Ghana is not a pilot country, she explained that the pilot countries will be scaled up over time, but in the meantime, Ghana has been one of the countries in great support of the idea even while not actively participating on the project. She further explained that the initial countries are those hamstrung by delivery of fundamental healthcare.

The five countries where the pilot has commenced was not just because AUDA-NEPAD was constrained by resources, but largely because these countries' healthcare needs significant boosting.

The better part of the two days was spent on country presentations from the pilot countries, and generating templates that could be used to help start the project. Mindful of the budget constraints, AUDA-NEPAD reminded the participants to keep refining the templates and the matrixes provided at the meeting so as to have a take-away they could work with when they returned home, including one that can help to identify strategic stakeholders who could be part of this innovative project.

By way of follow up, Dr Byaruhanga stressed three major outputs from this meeting, which included a baseline study; development of a governance framework; and execution of the project.

When we come down to the fundamentals to ask what the AU is doing about Africa's healthcare, we can point to AUDA-NEPAD as an AU agency with a hands-on approach to healthcare on the ground. It will be recalled that the preparations leading up to the establishment and ratification of the African Medecines Agency was spearheaded by teams from this Midrand-based AU agency.