Joint submission to APPG-Africa Inquiry into Community-led health systems and the Ebola outbreak

ReBUILD, together with the REACHOUT and COUNTDOWN RPC, produced this joint submission of evidence in response to a call from the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Africa’s Inquiry on community-led health systems and the Ebola outbreak.

The written evidence can be accessed here.

The Inquiry was seeking to explore the lessons from the Ebola crisis for community-led health systems strengthening through examining the current response to the Ebola crisis, and gathering evidence from experts and the affected communities in West Africa.

The final report of the APPG Inquiry will be accessible here when published.

Specific questions to be addressed were:

1.       What lessons can be learnt from the recent Ebola crisis in West Africa regarding the role of communities in response to health crises, and more broadly in relation to health systems at the local level?

2.       What more could the UK be doing to promote and enable the community engagement and ownership of health and health systems abroad particularly in African countries?

3.       To what degree are the current policies, resourcing and programming of the UK Government promoting community engagement and ownership of health and health systems in low- and middle- income countries?

4.       What are the principal challenges and gaps in responding to the Ebola crisis in rural and interior areas? What actions could be taken by the UK Government to improve that response?

5.       What, if any, are the barriers to successful and sustainable engagement of communities in health crisis response?

6.       What external policy, strategy and programming models could the UK Government support or adopt in order to improve their own and wider global response to this issue?

7.       In your opinion, is there value in the stress testing of health system function and if so what models could the UK support to promote health system preparedness for future crises?