Healthier lives for all Africans

Abstract

In their Commission, Irene Agyepong and colleagues (Dec 23, 2017, p 2803)1 provide a comprehensive report on the pathway to healthier lives for all Africans by 2030. As highlighted in the Commission, we have been involved in training family physicians in Africa for the past 20 years within the framework of the Primary Care and Family Medicine Education (Primafamed) network, a South–South cooperation that brings together family medicine, primary care, and public health in more than 20 African countries.2 The participating departments interact electronically, share educational strategies, develop distance learning, and build educational and research capacity through annual workshops, taking advantage of their African Journal for Primary Health Care and Family Medicine. The effects of the network have been documented, both in their development of departments and training programmes3 and regarding their outcomes (namely, better access to and quality of care for local communities).4 African family physicians can strengthen interdisciplinary primary health-care teams in primary care facilities and within communities and, when appropriate, are involved as expert generalists in district hospitals. All African countries are facing the challenge of scaling up availability of family physicians in primary health care to make quality health care accessible, particularly in urban slums and rural and remote areas. This accessibility requires a substantial proportion (40–60%) of graduates from medical schools in Africa to be trained for family medicine.5 More integration between primary care and public health services will be needed to combine facility-based and person-centred care with community-level responsiveness to population needs, and to improve health outcomes.6