At the end of July 2021 Bridge2Aid was invited to join a stakeholder workshop with the World Health Organisation.
Invited as experts in developing training programmes in remote and rural Africa, the workshop was attended by our Operations Manager, Paul Tasman, plus our colleagues Andrew Patterson, Rob Dyas and Martha Chipanda.
Martha, who is a senior member of the Dental Association of Malawi, gave a presentation about the work that Bridge2Aid has been doing with her and our other partners (The Maldent Project, the Dental Association of Malawi and Smileawai) in Malawi in 2020 and 2021. Presentations were also given by University of Montpelier and WHO regional office.
The workshop was facilitated by Harvard School of Dental Medicine and the aim of the day was to help WHO Regional Office for Africa (AFRO) in planning the development of an digital training course on oral health for community level workers to meet the unmet demand for oral health services. We attended along with the Chief Dental Officers of Liberia, Angola, Kenya and Senegal, University of Montpellier, University of Geneva and the World Dental Federation (FDI).
It was a fascinating and wide-ranging consultation aiming to build consensus on the scope and methodology of the digital raining course. Key questions discussed were: competency topics for community health worker, learning objectives for community health workers and facilitators and barriers to oral health digital training. We had the opportunity to work on these issues in detail in breakout groups.
The project is an ongoing one and Bridge2Aid were pleased to be recognised and included in this level of discussions. We’ll keep you all informed as the work progresses.