The goal of the Brighton Lusaka Health Link is to improve the health of people in Zambia by training and supporting healthcare professionals in Zambia. We aim to help reduce the 'brain drain' of Zambian health care professionals by focusing on continuing professional development for various cadres of health care professionals including nurses, midwives, doctors and pharmacists. Projects are identified by our colleagues in Zambia (see below for examples) and we use our funds to support 'scoping' visits allowing teams from the UK and Zambia to connect and develop projects that address various gaps in health care delivery. Once relationships have developed and a proposal developed, we support our colleagues in Brighton and Zambia in writing larger bids (e.g. to DFID, British Council THET) to develop sustainable training for health care professionals.
Our main beneficiaries are Zambian people of all ages who receive care from the healthcare workers we help to train and develop, and the health care workers themselves who benefit from ongoing professional development which in turn boosts morale and retention rates within the health care facilities.
We support a range of educational projects that all respond to a need that has been identified by Zambian colleagues and that enhance the knowledge and skills of health care professionals. These include the development of post-registration diploma courses in paediatric nursing and critical care nursing, short courses for nurses and midwives (e.g. HIV and neonatal resuscitation), developing an anaesthetics training programme and a new project that links pharmacists allowing exchange of ideas and good practice in both directions. We also sponsor clinical placements for Zambian professionals in Brighton (e.g. medical students on electives, and nurses doing eye surgery, HIV and emergency care placements).
An example to illustrate our work:
A Brighton-based consultant paediatrician who worked in Zambia many years ago became an external examiner for the Medicine course at the University of Zambia School of Medicine, through the BLHL. Research done by his Zambian colleagues noted that two-thirds of children who died in the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka did so within the first 48 hours of admission. BLHL funded a visit by specialised paediatric medical and nurse educators which resulted in a) a paediatric life support training programme that was designed and delivered in Lusaka which also trained trainers locally to ensure training continued (funded by a DFID/British Council grant over three years) and b) a one year post-registration course in paediatric nursing – the first in Zambia – to ensure that nurses caring for sick children have adequate training (funded by THET and a private donor).