Omaswa Francis - African Health Leaders

African Health Leaders

Creating change and claiming the future

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Oxford University Press 2014

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First Edition published in 2014

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014938493

ISBN 9780191008412

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Dedication

For our wives

Catherine Omaswa and Sin Crisp

Foreword: Her Excellency Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma

As Africans we must celebrate improvements in health and the people who have made them happen, but we must also claim our own future for ourselves.

There are many wonderful stories here of how people throughout Africa have worked to improve healthdrawing on the strengths of communities, creating innovative ways of delivering services, designing new roles for health workers, and calling on help from partners internationally. This rich experience enables us to see how, country by country, we can move towards our goal of offering health care to all our people.

Written by Africans, this book is essential reading for African health leaders who want to build on our own traditions and experience. It is also a vital orientation for partners who want to know how they can best support our efforts in a spirit of global solidarity.

Her Excellency Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma

Chairperson of the African Union Commission

Foreword: Dr Judith Roddin, Dr Mark Britnell, and Dr Paul Fife

This book, African Health Leaders: Creating Change and Claiming the Future, is a timely celebration of African leadership in health at a time when many African countries are growing rapidly and playing an increasingly prominent role in world affairs.

But despite these advances, Africa is still facing some of the worst health challenges in the worldfrom HIV/AIDS and malaria to staggering levels of maternal and child mortality. To address these problems head on, African health leaders are taking new approaches to problem solving, forming new and productive collaborations within their own nations, and joining with partners across the globe to transform entire health systems.

Yet, despite all we can learn from these visionaries, they remain all but unknown outside of the African continent. Little has been written by or about them, and their insights and experiences have been largely hidden from the rest of the world.

Until now. This book, written primarily in the words of African health leaders themselves, tells the story of how these leaders are tackling issues in their own countriesand, in doing so, are often sparking exciting new innovations in health and health care for the rest of the world. It is an invaluable source of information for individuals and organizations currently working in, or planning to work in, Africaand also has a great deal to teach the global community about how we can improve health in our own countries.

We are delighted to have played a part in supporting the production of this book. By celebrating the achievements of Africas recent past, we are better positioned to unlock the opportunities of its future.

Dr Judith Rodin, President, Rockefeller Foundation

Dr Mark Britnell, Global Chairman for Health, KPMG

Dr Paul Richard Fife, Director, Department for Global Health, Education and Research