Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Training women health deliverers, Afghanistan: first Tabish-Hillman (Rose Charities) workshop..

1st Tabish-Hillman (Rose Charities) Womens Community Health Training has been implemented. Around 40 women from different communities and health centers received the training.    Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of both maternal and infant mortality in childbirth in the world (see below)




"UN figures show that the number of women who perish in childbirth in Afghanistan each year – 24,000 – is 10 times the civilians killed in the war. The country has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world due to factors that include girls being married off as young as 12 and forced to give birth without hospital care." Click for Ref

Monday, September 26, 2011

Many Voices One Song meeting, South Africa - Hillman Fund (Rose) sponsors Ugandan participant


The Hillman Fund of Rose Charities will fund the participation of a Ugandan student in an International Colloquium 'Many Voices One Song" on Health Promoting Schools  at Stellenbosch University in November 2011 .
 Alex is in his final year of training at Makerere University (MUK) Medical School and a graduate of the Brighter Smiles Africa program, which  is our Ugandan school-based Health Promotion initiative that has been delivered successfully for the last 6 years through a partnership between the Faculties of Medicine at Makerere and the University of British Columbia, with the following three principal objectives:

To improve the health knowledge and determinants of health of rural Ugandan children through a school-based health promotion program delivered collaboratively by MUK College of Health Sciences undergraduates with teachers engaged and supported in community schools.

To provide previously unavailable opportunities for Ugandan Medical School trainees to experience valid community-based learning opportunities, through attachment in rural communities, and involvement in developing and delivering preventive health education, and

To foster international collaboration and mutual learning, in the context of improving child health globally, and to build capacity at MUK in educational program evaluation and research.

The international colloquium has been planned in recognition of the success of the Ugandan health promoting school (HPS) initiative, and will bring together international exerts and workers in the field to synthesize their key experience and evaluation of HPS models, and develop a manual for others to use to set up comparable programs in Sub-Saharan Africa.


After attending the colloquium Alex will work with us in the week afterwards on preparing the “How to” manual for starting programs in other schools in Sub-Saharan Africa. His reprise of his workshop presentation, and being there to join the discussion groups, will contribute a great deal to the understanding of other participants about the unique educational opportunities for medical students afforded by participation in community-based child health promotion programs in schools.