Currently I am involved in the advocacy programme for AORTIC; I just completed the Master Advocacy Program for AORTIC and also I’m involved in the Education and Training Program; I am the Chair of the AORTIC Education and Training Program. Also I chaired the National Cancer Control Plan section as well.
Can you tell us about the education plan?
The AORTIC Education and Training Plan, actually we have a committee that really focusses on being able to provide outstanding cancer education and training for Africans. That includes not only the cancer scientists and the cancer clinicians but other healthcare professionals as well, as well as non-healthcare professionals. The whole idea is to be able to have continuous outstanding cancer control care and services by training the professionals who are involved in cancer education and training.
How does this work?
What the Educational Committee has spent the last year doing is developing a strategic plan for cancer education and training in Africa. So essentially we have quite a number of members who are really mostly from Africa and we have a few who are Africans in the diaspora. The first task is to take a step back and try and figure out what are the needs of Africans when it comes to cancer education and training. So we developed a survey and that survey was implemented a couple of months ago and we currently have over 200 responses back but we are also doing active data collection during this session as well. The survey is to first of all identify what are the needs when it comes to education and training but not only identify the needs, we want to identify what is the best means for us to actually do education and training programmes. So we are doing a lot with ICT and looking at what technology is available; would face-to-face training be better for them or would it be better if we do web-based training programmes. We are now getting the data back and we are going to analyse the data and really go ahead and focus our effort in meeting the needs that have been identified.
In line with that, because once we have the needs we really need to look at what are the specific resource people that we can have to be able to assist with cancer education and training in Africa. So we are going to be coming up with a second survey and that survey is going to focus on the key resource people, not only within Africa but outside Africa, especially Africans in the diaspora or friends of Africa who have actually done a lot of work. We have a lot of people who are doing education and training in Africa, we want to be able to reach out to them and collaborate with them.
