Wellness Update: Africa: key to improving the tenuous state of health care in sub-Saharan Africa is to train and retain more doctors and other medical

UMB News: "Professor George Magoha, vice chancellor of the University of Nairobi (UoN), understands that the key to improving the tenuous state of health care in sub-Saharan Africa is to train and retain more doctors and other medical professionals.

Last week, Magoha led a 12-member UoN delegation, including the deans of its schools of dental sciences, medicine, and pharmacy, and directors of its schools of nursing and public health, on a fact-finding trip to the University of Maryland's (UM) Baltimore campus. 'We came to strengthen our partnerships with the University of Maryland by visiting firsthand to our contemporaries in each of your schools, because this is one of the premier universities in the U.S.,' said Magoha.

According to World Health Organization records, Africa has only 2.3 health care workers per 1,000 people, compared with the Americas, where there are 24.8 health care workers per 1,000 people. There is an estimated shortage of 817,992 health care workers in Africa.

The Kenyans' visit is part of a five-year, National Institutes of Health-funded Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) to the UoN in partnership with UM and the University of Washington."