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Training Health Workers
AMREF is training health workers in close to 40 African countries. Through its training, AMREF aims to strengthen the capacity and capability of health and health-related professionals and institutions.
Every year AMREF trains more than 10,000 community health workers who bring health close closer to the people in some of Africa’s most marginalised communities. Health workers are the backbone of the health system in many African countries, and without them, the health system fails. AMREF believes it is extremely important to increase the numbers of health workers across all countries we work in, to provide the vital link between communities and the health system.
AMREF also trains doctors, nurses, community midwives, clinical officers, laboratory technicians and pharmacists. Established in 1973, the International Training Centre in Nairobi provides a host of training courses, with an emphasis on continuing education for all rural health workers.
One of AMREF’s most notable award-winning training programmes is an innovative eLearning programme, which helps to improve the skills of 7,000 nurses in Kenya. Read more about this programme
Training nurses via e-learning, Tanzania
A single nurse will save more than a thousand lives over the course of his/her career. More than 85% of Kenya’s nurses are trained at certificate level and do not have registered nurses’ diploma, leaving them inadequately qualified.
One in 39 women die in pregnancy or childbirth in Africa. Midwives are vital in the effort to improve this shocking statistic. Women die needlessly of conditions that would be easily treatable if trained staff were available.
Each year, AMREF trains thousands of community health workers from villages across Africa. The African health worker crisis is particularly acute in rural and hard to reach areas, in which 80% of Africa’s population live.
Clinical officers play a key role in the health services of many African countries. They can perform 60-80% of doctors’ tasks but can be trained in half the time at one fifth of the cost. Clinical officers are a mid-level cadre of health professional, whose role falls between a doctor and a nurse.
Each year, AMREF surgeons train over 1,000 doctors in more than 100 remote hospitals in seven African countries. Every week, AMREF flies specialist and reconstructive surgeons to various remote and hard-to-reach hospitals in eastern Africa.
