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. 2018 Apr 2;18(1):60.
doi: 10.1186/s12909-018-1163-9.

What should the African health workforce know about disasters? Proposed competencies for strengthening public health disaster risk management education in Africa

Olushayo Olu  1 , Abdulmumini Usman  2 , Kalula Kalambay  3 , Stella Anyangwe  4 , Kuku Voyi  4 , Christopher Garimoi Orach  5 , Aklilu Azazh  6 , Mala Ali Mapatano  7 , Ngoy Nsenga  2 , Lucien Manga  8 , Solomon Woldetsadik  9 , Francois Nguessan  2 , Angela Benson  10
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What should the African health workforce know about disasters? Proposed competencies for strengthening public health disaster risk management education in Africa

Olushayo Olu et al. BMC Med Educ. .

Abstract

Background: As part of efforts to implement the human resources capacity building component of the African Regional Strategy on Disaster Risk Management (DRM) for the health sector, the African Regional Office of the World Health Organization, in collaboration with selected African public health training institutions, followed a multistage process to develop core competencies and curricula for training the African health workforce in public health DRM. In this article, we describe the methods used to develop the competencies, present the identified competencies and training curricula, and propose recommendations for their integration into the public health education curricula of African member states.

Methods: We conducted a pilot research using mixed methods approaches to develop and test the applicability and feasibility of a public health disaster risk management curriculum for training the African health workforce.

Results: We identified 14 core competencies and 45 sub-competencies/training units grouped into six thematic areas: 1) introduction to DRM; 2) operational effectiveness; 3) effective leadership; 4) preparedness and risk reduction; 5) emergency response and 6) post-disaster health system recovery. These were defined as the skills and knowledge that African health care workers should possess to effectively participate in health DRM activities. To suit the needs of various categories of African health care workers, three levels of training courses are proposed: basic, intermediate, and advanced. The pilot test of the basic course among a cohort of public health practitioners in South Africa demonstrated their relevance.

Conclusions: These competencies compare favourably to the findings of other studies that have assessed public health DRM competencies. They could provide a framework for scaling up the capacity development of African healthcare workers in the area of public health DRM; however further validation of the competencies is required through additional pilot courses and follow up of the trainees to demonstrate outcome and impact of the competencies and curriculum.

Keywords: Africa; Core competencies; Disaster risk management; Education; Health workforce; Public health; Training curricula.

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Conflict of interest statement

Authors’ information

OO, AU, KK, SA, NN, LM, SW, FN, and AB were members of the WHO/AFRO Outbreak and Disaster Management (ODM) Programme at various times over several years, and participated in the development of the core competencies. The ODM programme was primarily responsible for development of the public health DRM core competencies. SA, LM, and AB served as ODM programme managers at various times, and AU, KK and FN were Regional Advisers. NN and OO served as sub-regional focal points for Eastern/Southern Africa and West Africa, respectively, and SW was the country focal point for Uganda. KV, CGO, AA, and MAM are academicians from the Universities of Pretoria, Makerere, Addis Ababa, and Kinshasa, respectively; they were members of the African public health DRM curriculum development team.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This study was conducted as part of implementation of the African Regional Strategy for Health DRM. No human subjects were involved in the study, hence ethical approval was not sought. WHO/AFRO approved the publication of the study (WHO e-Pub no: ePub-IP-00067036-EC).

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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