At a time when different Variants of Covid-19 Pandemic is ravaging the world, the Centre for Health Sciences Training, Research and Development, CHESTRAD, a non-government and not-for-profit organisation has charted eight priority areas to be focused on in the next three years for engagement as part of the post COVID-19 pandemic recovery strategy.
The advocacy initiative under the new strategic plan places priority on “equity, inclusion, and solidarity” with focus on primary health care (PHC) through expansion of partnerships; especially with the private sector to expand resource base for growth and sustainability.
The strategic plan hopes to consolidate partnerships with a wide range of stakeholders including citizens and duty bearers to demand and entrench equitable access to health delivery and effective response to public health emergencies in the global south.
Unveiling the plan in a statement, CHESTRAD Global President, Dr. Lola Dare, promised her organisation’s readiness to forge ahead with the “new strategic plan with Great Expectations that COVID19 build back investments will thoughtfully re-imagine the inter-dependence required to end the pandemic and to achieve global health development goals in Africa”.
According to her, the organisation “will continue to strengthen its operational procedures and thought leadership at global and regional levels through partnerships of shared value and mutual respect. CHESTRAD Global will focus on attainment of globally recognized benchmarks, including those established by the International Aids Transparency Initiative (IATI) amongst others”.
The statement draws attention to the successes of previous engagements under 2018 – 2021 strategic plan in terms of making thought leadership and voices for change in the global south heard on global health and development debates in terms of “country determined priorities, equity, blended financing, democratized access to data and learning” in the quest for effective implementation of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Drawing on the huge lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of poor access to health care and economic disruptions with attendant impacts of the social media on citizens, policy and public trust as a result of infodemic, CHESTRAD has repositioned for short and long term strategies relevant in “identifying fit-for-purpose dynamic interventions at global, regional, and country (including sub-national levels) and across four iterative phases of a pandemic viz; Rescue, Recover, Restore and Reimagine”. Strategic repositioning becomes imperative in providing effective and efficient responses to communicable diseases such as cholera, lassa fever, malaria, HIV, diarrheal diseases considering that African “health systems are very fragile, fragmented with investments dominated by globally determined priorities rather than locally felt or prioritized needs.”
Within the strategic framework (2022 -2025), CHESTRAD will forge partnership for multi-sector interventions with focus on: expanding access to financial services for women and young persons as a key component of COVID19 bounce back investments and financial risk protection to achieve health SDGs; and positioning blended financing remains centre stage, including de-risking investments in health and education, expanding access of country and regional based organizations to both social impact investments and grants.
It will also democratize access to, and use of, technology, information management and data science as well re-define global solidarity and diplomacy for health and development, using the global advocacy for ‘vaccine equity’ as a test case of her commitment to shared humanity.
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