CARE Cambodia recently hosted an event which brought together partners from across Asia to celebrate achivements in improving maternal health and share ideas for future investments in health workers.
Representatives of CARE and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) from six countries across Asia came together in Phnom Penh to celebrate achievements of their partnership. Built to address global shortage of skilled community health workforce, the partnership is part of the 20% reinvestment initiative that seeks to reinvest 20% of GSK’s profits in the least developed countries into their own health systems. This is primarily through training frontline health workers, educating communities and working with governments.
GSK is funding CARE projects in Cambodia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Afghanistan and Nepal. Each country has its own approaches to improving healthcare for the hard to reach. In Cambodia, building links between village-level health volunteers and health centre staff is helping ensure children receive all their vaccinations, while in Bangladesh training community based skilled birth attendants means that communities receive quality maternal and child health services.
By bringing these teams together, CARE and GSK are ensuring that examples of the most effective ways of engaging with health workers are shared so that this work can impact as many people as possible.
“It is a pleasure to bring together GSK and CARE colleagues from so many countries in the region for the purpose of sharing and learning how we are working together to improve health service delivery,” says Joanne Fairley, CARE Cambodia’s Country Director. “Cambodia has seen very positive impacts from this partnership with GSK: our support to health staff is ensuring remote areas have access to reliable medical services; children are being vaccinated against preventable diseases; and pregnant mothers are receiving quality care.”
Sharing learning from the last three years also allowed the partnership to look to the future. Daryl Burnaby, Manager of Community Partnerships, Emerging Markets Asia Pacific and Europe at GSK UK, says: “We are excited about this opportunity for us to review what we have achieved together in the last three years and build on our experience to develop this exciting partnership even further in years to come. There exists a significant shortage globally of skilled and supported health workers. Our 20% Reinvestment programme in Asia focuses on addressing this shortage by training health workers, building local capacity, educating communities to take greater ownership of their own health, and advocating with governments for increased investment in their health system. GSK has been proud to partner with CARE in this work regionally and look forward to many more years of fruitful work together.”
To learn more about what CARE has achieved with GSK’s support in Cambodia watch this video or read this publication.