Webinar Series Solidifies PEN-Plus Collaboration Among Francophone Countries
A successful PEN-Plus study tour in the Kono District of Sierra Leone inspired the launch of a webinar series for Francophone countries. (Photo: Andrea Fleurant/NCDI Poverty Network)
Health officials from several French-speaking countries in western and central Africa have begun meeting in bimonthly webinars to share challenges and successes in expanding care for people living with severe noncommunicable diseases. The new series solidifies a groundbreaking collaboration that began with a February study tour in Sierra Leone.
Dr. Remy Bitwayiki, the NCDI Poverty Network’s regional advisor for West Africa, said participants in the February study tour expressed a strong desire for further conversations. The primary topic was PEN-Plus, a package of clinical services that enables frontline providers in low-income health systems to provide high-quality care for people living with severe, chronic NCDs, such as type 1 diabetes, sickle cell disease, and rheumatic and congenital heart disease.
Use of PEN-Plus is growing quickly across Africa.
In 2022, all 47 member states of WHO’s African Region adopted the PEN-Plus model as their strategy for advancing access to care for people living with severe, chronic NCDs. Eleven African countries now have PEN-Plus clinics, and WHO’s African Region has set the ambitious goal of having 70 percent of member states initiate PEN-Plus services by 2030.
But materials and resources have heavily favored English, creating a language barrier for Francophone countries. Efforts to break that barrier have included the study tour and now the webinars, which bring together health officials from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, and the Republic of the Congo.
Those countries are all in Phase 2 of PEN-Plus, which means they have conducted a situational analysis and established priorities, and now are designing care delivery models. Phases 3 and 4 involve initial implementation and national scale-up.
“The goal of the webinars is to help these countries prepare for their next phase of PEN-Plus implementation,” said Dr. Bitwayiki, who also serves as the West African regional advisor for the Network’s U.S. co-secretariat, the Center for Integration Science in Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “We cover different topics, such as PEN-Plus programmatic standards, staff, medicines, and equipment.”
Dr. Bitwayiki said the process also includes preparation of more French-language PEN-Plus materials, such as guidelines, protocols, and technical solutions.
The webinars naturally are conducted in French and occur every two months. While the plan is for future webinars to feature experts who will discuss specific topics, for the first webinar, held in May, Dr. Bitwayiki was the only speaker.
He said that didn’t dampen interest—48 people attended, and the conversation went 30 minutes beyond the scheduled time because of questions and interaction.
“The audience was amazing,” Dr. Bitwayiki said. “They were so participative—asking many questions, offering thoughtful comments, and giving insight from their own experience.”