Dear Edem,
Thank you for your timely message today. I join you in thanking all CHIFA members for your support in 2024 and wishing you well for 2025.
You refer to The Lancet paper: The next 1000 days: the forgotten ages of child health [ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02553-4/fulltext ]
“what are the priority information and learning needs of health workers and parents with regards to child health age 2-5 years? What do we know about the current quality of care in this age group? And what are the priority human rights issues for this age group?”
You say: "As a practitioner and advocate [in Ghana], these questions keep lingering on my mind. These are some of the issues I am carrying along into 2025 where I will continue to promote discussions at all levels on how to find holistic answers to them."
It is so valuable to learn from your experience and that of other frontline health workers.
Meanwhile, a reflection from me... The goal of CHIFA is 'A world where every child, every parent and every health worker has access to the health information they need to protect their own health and the health of children for whom they are responsible'. It is an indictment of the global evidence ecosystem that children, parents and health workers continue to lack access to reliable, actionable healthcare information in a language and format that they can understand.
Now more than ever we need political and financial commitment to universal access to reliable healthcare information. Our global consultation for WHO overwhelmingly called for WHO to explicitly champion the goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information, and for WHO and HIFA to convene stakeholders to develop a global strategy to accelerate progress:
www.hifa.org/report
www.hifa.org/infographic
Our strategic priority in 2025 is to persuade WHO to implement the recommendations of the consultation: 'to explicitly champion the goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information [and] to convene stakeholders to develop a global strategy to accelerate progress' with support from HIFA and partners. This would be a game-changer for global (child) health.
CHIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
