Passengers at a bus station in Kigali, Rwanda on March 22, 2020. Covid-19 has forced organisations and governments to timely think and act creatively about interventions that can be tailored to contain the spread of the virus. PHOTO | FILE | AFP
Perpetuated by the media, Covid-19’s onslaught on global health, socio-economic standing, infrastructure, and every sector worldwide can be defined by many through one image repeated again and again, that of personal protective equipment clad health care professionals.
This, of course, is a good thing; frontline health care providers around the world have gone too long unrecognised and uncompensated, and only through a global pandemic have their efforts become widely valued as critical not only to physical and mental wellbeing, but the health of our economies and wider sectors. Yet our frontline medical professionals, critical though, they are not the only cogs in the wider global health machine.
Covid-19 has forced organisations, governments, ministries of health and centres of disease surveillance and control to timely think and act creatively about interventions, programmes and projects that can be tailored to contain the spread of the virus and, ultimately, reduce life loss. Covid-19 has taught us many things, critically, that governments need to find pathways to continue effective, evidence-based implementation of projects and programmes to maintain and expand health and medical education infrastructures for future resilience.
A project manager’s role should be considered intrinsically entwined to these programmes. At the University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), a global health sciences university in Rwanda, project management is embraced within all operations, from the university’s inception, to fighting Covid-19.
If project managers are critical to health care delivery and education, and the foundational support for global health activities globally, why are there so few? There are just over one million active certified project managers globally, a few hundreds of these are on the African continent. Eighteen out of 280 project management charters lie in sub Saharan African. In Rwanda, there are approximately less than 60 certified project management professionals serving a population size of over 12 million. In an effort to address this gap, Rwanda’s first project management Institute Chapter was established this year, aligning with the country’s strategic development agenda that puts emphasis on developing its human capital.
Recognising the value of robust health system project management, UGHE incorporates project management skills, seen by some traditional medical institutions as ‘softer skills’, within all UGHE curricula, so that graduates are not only equipped to deliver health care, but also optimise health infrastructure to drive large-scale change in health systems. Through its staff career development support, UGHE also encourages its staff to grow their career in project management, with three certified project managers already trained through the scheme, and more undergoing certification processes.
It is critical that, for the crises we will inevitably face in the future, global health organisations see project management as a vital discipline behind the successful outcomes of global health projects. Organisations,governments, and institutions that embrace project management discipline from the onset of project planning to its final execution will maximise value and return on their investments, inject sustainability into services and infrastructure, and make meaningful transformation within the societies they serve.
Emmanuel Kamanzi is the director of Infrastructure at the University of Global Health Equity
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