The delegation of my H.E. Toyin Saraki Global Policy and Philanthropy Office and the Wellbeing Foundation Africa was glad to take part in Connect, Power, Heal, Bundling Connectivity, Energy, Innovation and Partnership at the Health Frontline, convened at the UN Church Center during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly by the Health Innovation Exchange under this year’s Better Together banner, bringing together Proximie, Amref Health Africa, the M-PESA Foundation, the Mawingu Foundation, the Council of Governors of Kenya, the American College of Surgeons through ACS H.O.P.E., Lwala Community Alliance and Lacuna.

Ask a surgeon in a district hospital what stands between her and the operation in front of her, and the answer is seldom a single thing. The theatre may be equipped and the power unreliable, the clinician skilled and the specialist unreachable, the technology installed and the bandwidth absent. Bundled together, last-mile connectivity, dependable energy and fit-for-purpose clinical technology amount to a functioning service, while delivered separately each waits upon the others.

As Special Adviser to the Independent Advisory Group of the WHO Africa Regional Office, and in our capacity as a partner to this work through my Wellbeing Foundation Africa, I have observed how frequently the constraint upon our health systems rests in these foundations rather than in the will or the skill of African health workers, and how swiftly matters improve when partners arrive together rather than in turn.

There was a welcome discipline to this convening, as partners returned a year on from the commitments made at the last General Assembly to account for what has been delivered, what has held and what has proved harder than expected. That habit of coming back to report is one our sector would do well to adopt far more widely.

Governments, operators and investors would do well to design connectivity, energy and clinical technology as a single proposition, so that the frontline receives a service that works rather than a collection of parts.

 

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