Celebrating African Motherhood - Amref

2009, AVNS had enrolled 187 students. Of the 27 students from AVNS’s
inaugural class who sat for the NCK’s national examination in January
2009, 25 (93 per cent) passed. All 35 (100%) students who sat for the
exam in August 2009 passed.
AMREF Resource Centre
• AMREF’s Resource Centre is a clearing house for health information
and learning materials in sub-Saharan Africa. It maintains up-to-date
health information either in electronic or print form, mainly books
and journals. In 2008/9, the Resource Centre provided information
services to AMREF staff , health workers and the general public. Annual
subscription increased from 2,149 members in 2007/2008 to 2,379
members in 2008/2009, while monthly subscription increased by over
200 per cent, from 71 members to 228 members.
• The Resource Centre joined the Africa Water Information Service
(AWIS), a web-based platform, as one of 10 sub-regional hubs. The
main objective of the AWIS project is to enable sharing of information
and knowledge in water and sanitation. The Resource Centre is
involved with identifying and uploading the most current water and
sanitation knowledge and information into the AWIS portal. This is
a good opportunity for AMREF to share experiences and knowledge
gained from its water and sanitation projects.
Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Knowledge Hub
The East and Southern African Knowledge Hubs Network (ESA KH) brings
together knowledge hubs from Uganda, Kenya, Sudan and South Africa.
Its aim is to develop regional centres of excellence in HIV/AIDS training,
research and technical assistance. In 2009, the network received grants
from the German BACKUP Initiative through Health Focus GmbH to
implement various activities. As the interim secretariat and treasurer of the
ESA Knowledge Hubs network, the ART Knowledge Hub was involved in
several activities:
• The ART Knowledge Hub was involved in the writing and presentation
of a paper titled ‘Learning on the Run: Leveraging the e-Learning
Model to Scale up the Capacity Building of Health Workers Providing
HIV/AIDS HIV
Services’, which was presented at the ESA Knowledge Hubs
Network regional meeting in June in Kigali, Rwanda Conference.
The Hub participated in the African Knowledge Hubs Conference in
Durban, South Africa, in July and presented a paper entitled ‘Evaluating
Training Programmes: The AMREF Experience’.
• The hub set up an ART information desk which is situated at the AMREF
resource centre. It provides real time information response to the
Resource centre users with inquiries on HIV and AIDS and conducted
literature searches for at least 450-500 library users every week.
Advocacy and Policy Infl uencing
AMREF sits on three global and regional Human Resources for Health (HRH)
committees: the Global Health Workforce Alliance (GHWA), the African HRH
Observatory and the African Platform on HRH. Furthermore, AMREF hosts
and chairs the African Leadership and Management Network.
Future Plans
The Directorate’s Vision 2020 envisions an evolution of the AMREF Training
Centre to AMREF International College and subsequently to AMREF
International University.
Health Policy and Systems Research
The Directorate of Health Policy and Systems Research was formed in
2007 as one of three core directorates in line with AMREF’s 2007-2017
strategy. The directorate’s strategic objectives are to infl uence policy and
practice using evidence and lessons learned, and knowledge management
for generating, organising, and sharing of health policy and systems
knowledge.
Core Research
In 2009, the Directorate championed the production of case studies
on AMREF’s programmes and project. Two series with a total of seven
case studies were published and a new series of Discussion Papers was
launched with the publication of two papers: ‘Impact Assessment of
25