Edmund Ndudi Ossai, Osondu Ogbuoji
Introduction
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is harming medical education in Africa. This effect will likely grow as the pandemic evolves, and in some countries, become long lasting. However, while policy-makers have focused their attention on mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on the more visible parts of the health system (eg, service delivery and health finance), little attention has been given to the less visible but essential function of medical education. Africa bears 27% of the global burden of disease, yet has only 3.5% of the global health workforce and only 1.7% of the world’s physicians.1 This situation will worsen due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the varied country responses. Currently, 24 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have only one medical school, while 11 countries have no medical school.2 Furthermore, the high total cost of medical education in the region, which ranges from US$18 870 in Uganda to US$40 383 in South Africa,3 and limited government support provided to students, place significant financial burdens on families and households.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools of medicine, nursing, and allied health training across Africa face challenges due to partial or total disruptions to their academic calendars. While some schools had complete shutdowns, others made adjustments, such as adopting remote learning methods. Nevertheless, these disruptions will have short-term, medium-term and long-term impacts on the number and quality of health workers trained on the continent, which will affect Africa’s ability to achieve universal health coverage by 2030.
In this paper, we discuss the impact of COVID-19 on medical education in Africa and assess policy-makers' options for mitigating these negative consequences. Current forecasts suggest that the pandemic could halt two decades of sustained economic growth in Africa, thus creating the region’s first recession in 25 years. Such a recession will have far-reaching effects on medical education. Therefore, responding to the impact of COVID-19 on medical education will require collective action for (1) early identification of the problem and (2) out-of-the-box thinking to design innovative, feasible, contextually appropriate and affordable solutions. In our discussion, we use the term medical education in an inclusive way, to describe both preservice and in-service training for all types of health workers regardless of professional affiliation. This includes physicians, nursing and allied health workers.
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March 12, 2021 at 03:58PM
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Redressing the impact of COVID-19 on medical education in Africa: the need for collective action - World - ReliefWeb
"impact" - Google News
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