MKU in programme to help reverse Africa’s brain drain

By Boniface Ongeri

A leading private university has devised a unique method of reversing Africa’s brains drain to Europe and the US and plans to revolutionise healthcare and training.

Mt Kenya University has established Education and Quality Improvement Partnership for Health in Africa (EQuIp-Africa) institute, which it hopes would turnaround provision of health-care and training in Africa.

It is estimated that Africa continues to lose about Sh348 billion ($4 billion) following the migration of professionals while some of the beneficiaries such as UK had as many as 31 per cent of their doctors are born abroad.

According to a study conducted in 2005 and published by Journal of Public Health, the cost of training one doctor in Kenya is approximately Sh4.1 million while that of educating a nurse is Sh3.7 million.

It is this colossal drain that MKU sought to address when it set up EQuIp-Africa, timed to start as Kenya celebrated its 48th birthday last week.

The initiative is an avenue to bring back or collaborate with qualified Kenyans in the Diaspora through working partnerships and information exchange efforts with the best institutions in the world.

The task of reversing the brain drain is spearheaded by Dr Edith Munene, a global expert in public health and policy, leadership and organisational management work experience.

She has worked in the US for 18 years and was the Deputy Executive Director of the Regional Centre for Quality of Health Care (RCQHC), Makerere University, School of Public Health, Uganda.

Tapping expertise

Previously, she worked with various institutions including manning some centers for the US’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention as developing capacity building mechanisms well for Vermont’s Centre for African Families studies.

Munene said her approach will be tapping into the expertise of Kenyans in the Diaspora by offering them incentives so that they can contribute towards capacity building in their motherland.

"We have been complaining all the time about how much Kenya and Africa has lost to the West in form of brain drain. It is time to reverse the trend by getting the brain to flow back to Africa."

By forming partnerships and collaborations with the experts and in the Diaspora as well as well other international organisations, the institute will be offering pre-service and post-service courses.

The initiative targets all cadres of personnel from the Chief Executive Officer to medics, clinical and nursing as well as supportive staff so that they can improve health-care. It is also focusing on health-care institutions with an aim of conducting research which will yield evidence to be used to making policies and health programmes.

"We will also build partnership with innovators to enhance demand driven innovations to solve healthcare challenges. This way, we will offer African solutions to African problems," the institute’s leader said.

"With proper research and informed strategic planning, Africa can reduce the number of HIV/Aids maternal and newborn deaths. We have the capacity to win this war," Munene added.

The chairman of the board of Mt Kenya University, Simon Gicharu said his board had endorsed the establishment of EQuIp-Africa Institute which will be run autonomously.

Promote quality

Gicharu explained "EQuIp-Africa will work with African governments, Developmental organisations and other healthcare entities to promote quality of health in Africa."

Dr Stephen Kinoti, a veteran researcher with 30 years experience who has also joined the new initiative said the new institute will offer continuous quality improvement in all diploma, bachelors and higher degree courses.

"Technical knowledge alone is not enough to prepare clinicians and other practitioners to deliver quality services. They need to be prepared in continuous quality improvement through improved training," Kinoti said.

He said mentoring and coaching at the service delivery points of the medics as well as monitoring their performance using appropriate indicators linked the national Health Information Management system.

Munene added, "In six months, the effects of EQuIp-Africa, will start being felt across the country and in other parts of Africa as some Kenyans working in the Diaspora are willing to work with us. So far, a number of governments and institutions from Africa region and America have expressed their support towards the initiative.

Locally, once the initiative is fully operational, EQuIP-Africa hopes to establish mechanisms which will make it possible for easy transfer of data from one hospital to another once a patient is transferred.