CIDA awards U of S $3.3 million grant to build health delivery in Mozambique

Posted September 17, 1997


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - September 17, 1997
97-09-09-NU

CIDA awards U of S $3.3 million grant to build
health delivery in Mozambique

The University of Saskatchewan has been awarded a $3.3 million
program grant from the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA) to enhance training for health workers in Mozambique.

The five-year program will be undertaken with the National Directorate of
Health and other health organizations in Mozambique, and will involve U
of S faculties of Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, Pharmacy and Nutrition,
Physical Therapy, and others.

The Community Education and Outreach Centre in Saskatoon,
Saskatoon District Health, Saskatchewan Health, the Combined
Faculties of Health Sciences at the University of Western Cape, South
Africa, and the University of McMaster Research Centre for the Promotion
of Women's Health will also be involved.

The program will be coordinated by the Prairie Region Health Promotion
Research Centre (PRHPRC) at the U of S.

Gerri Dickson, program coordinator and associate professor of nursing at
the U of S, says the aim of the program is to help health workers become
more responsive and accountable to local people. Mozambique has
identified health improvement as a central focus for building peace in that
country. Primary health care and health worker training are keys to
improving the response of the health care system to community needs.

She noted that the program will aim to enhance health worker training by
creating new methods and resources for teaching health workers. It will
also work to increase support for health workers to practice more
effectively with local people in their communities.

There are many commonalities in the challenges facing health workers in
communities in Canada, Mozambique, and elsewhere, Dickson added.
The program will be designed to enable us to learn from each other.
Field training and research sites for learning and practice in the
community will be established in Mozambique and Canada. There also
will be international networking through a Centre for Community Health
Training and Practice located in the PRHPRC, which has experience in
promoting health in the community.

Joan Feather, coordinator of the PRHPRC, noted that the program builds
on a long association between the U of S and the Ministry of Health in
Mozambique, based on the recent CIDA-funded project that trained
teachers of oral health workers, a project also supported by CUSO.

The new program expands the partnership in Mozambique to
encompass training for all kinds of health workers and organizations
outside government and, in Canada, to include all health science
faculties and major partner organizations outside the University. These
partnerships will help to connect the universities to local communities in
Mozambique and Canada and to provide opportunities for health
workers, teachers, and students to develop and practice in more
egalitarian ways, one of the key goals of the program.

Through the program, Feather added, health workers and their teachers
in Mozambique, Canada, and South Africa will form an international
partnership that will benefit health work in communities and facilitate
understanding and education about international development.

For more information, contact:

Gerri Dickson, Associate Professor
College of Nursing
University of Saskatchewan
Health Sciences Building
107 Wiggins Road
Saskatoon, SK S7N 5E5
Phone: (306) 966-7939
FAX: (306) 966-7920
E-mail: dicksong@duke.usask.ca
or
Joan Feather, Coordinator
Prairie Region Health Promotion Research Centre
University of Saskatchewan
Health Sciences Building
107 Wiggins Road
SASKATOON SK S7N 5E5
Phone: (306) 966-7932
Fax: (306) 966-7920
E-mail: feather@duke.usask.ca