Efforts to reboot health care in Africa are not new most notably dating back to the landmark 1978 Alma Ata Declaration charting the road to ‘health for all’. Although most African countries in the subsequent decades adopted the principles of primary health care (PHC) articulated in the Alma Ata Declaration, in too many cases PHC services were under-resourced resulting in PHC being stigmatized as “second class care for second class citizens.” In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic there is renewed effort to build on and scale up those parts of the push for ‘health for all’ in Africa that have worked well, most notably the community health care approach now a vital feature of many national health programs.

Former Nigerian Health Minister, Dr. Muhammad Pate, now Julio Frenk Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadershipat the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (and one of the earliest ‘graduates’ of the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program) is leading a ‘consortium’ of the best brains in health in Africa to refocus thinking about public health care in Africa. Read more about this effort here: https://harvardpublichealth.org/africas-changing-public-health-the-world-should-take-note/