Working together for better health access in Africa
Regional Aspirations
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Movement Health started its journey in Africa in 2022. Kicking off in Algeria and South Africa, each country began by recruiting local experts to country expert panels where they reviewed local research, shared insights and together decided where action at both a system and service level will have the most impact.
In Algeria, a group of experts from the health ecosystem held a series of four round table meetings where they explored the challenges facing Algerian healthcare, before focusing on three key areas where they believe action can lead to the most impact. These are
1. Educating the workforce for the digitisation of the healthcare sector
2. Adapting care provision to the societal changes
3. Streamlining the healthcare financing situation
As a result of the expert panels prioritisation exercise, an innovation challenge will be held in Algeria in 2023 with scalable solutions welcome from anywhere in the world.
Meanwhile in South Africa, a group of local experts have been meeting with a focus on women's health. Ensuring equal access to public services, and ensuring those services respond to the specific needs of women’s health, is fundamental to reducing poverty, inequality, and advancing the rights of women and girls. However, it is clear that in South Africa, one of the world's most inequitable societies, women and girls are at the periphery of the healthcare system. They struggle to access healthcare workers, medication, treatment, and mental support. One of the ways this inequity is clear s in the late diagnosis and high mortality rates in diseases such as cervical and breast cancer. The Movement Health expert panel are focusing their attention here, looking at potential solutions to this core need.

Africa
South Africa
Algeria
Ghana
Less than half of Africa’s citizens (52%) – some 615 million people – have access to the healthcare they need
Each year, approximately 97 million Africans, representing 8.2% of the continent’s population, incur “catastrophic healthcare costs”
Healthy life expectancy in Africa has increased on average by 10 years per person to 56 years of age between 2000 and 2019.

South Africa
The South African expert panel have decided to focus on women centred care to reduce gendered inequities and improve health and well-being for women. The experts are placing a particular focus on cervical and breast cancer care.
Algeria
In Algeria, the expert panel has prioritised three areas of focus: digitisation, care provision and financing. In 2023, an innovation challenge will be held to look for tested, scalable solutions in these areas.
Ghana
The Ghana Movement Health activity is just getting started. As a first step, the local expert panel is coming together to identify and prioritise the country's greatest health system challenges.