Health training gets R16m shot in the arm

A UNIVERSITY of Cape Town (UCT) training programme for senior public health sector officials had received a R16m shot in the arm from an international funding body, the university said yesterday. International research showed health systems across the globe lacked management capacity, especially in the fields of leadership, change management and business skills, said Prof Rodney Ehrlich, director of UCT’s School of Public Health and Family Medicine. The R16m, from The Atlantic Philanthropies, would enable UCT’s Oliver Tambo Fellowship Programme to be relaunched as a 50-50 partnership between Ehrlich’s school and the university’s Graduate School of Business. This would considerably strengthen the management and leadership aspects of the programme, UCT spokesman Michael Morgan said. The programme was launched in 1996 with Kaiser Family Foundation funding, but that ended in 2004. A redesigned diploma in health management will be taught as an 18-month programme, with four “blocks”, two from the family health school and two from the business school. SA’s health system faced many challenges and a skills development initiative such as the fellowship programme was needed to address some of these, said Ehrlich. The challenges faced included the rapid progression of HIV/AIDS, the need to mount large-scale HIV treatment services, as well as the struggle to develop district (primary care) health services.