Who We Are
About Us
VAKA Health Foundation is a capacity building social enterprise for Healthcare workers throughout Africa. VAKA is an African word widely understood across Africa which translates to ‘build or develop’. This action-based word reflects our values and ethos to building better, easily accessible healthcare in Africa.
We provide world class continuing medical professional development and education to healthcare workers across the African continent including those in resource limited communities. We offer these services through digital health and artificial intelligence technologies which are cost-effective, sustainable and appropriate to the limitations of the local people and available infrastructure to ensure universal accessibility. This is a solution to bridge lack of access to modern and contextualized professional development opportunities and lack of access to modern clinical decision support software in Africa (Medical Protocols and Drug Protocols).
Our platform provides expertise and professional networks to healthcare workers all over Africa through opening endless career pathway options and opportunities for them. This is delivered through offering engaging evidence based and context specific learning modules for continuing professional healthcare learning. It also provides efficient and effective communication and up to date information on trending healthcare matters.
We work with both local and global credentialed and compassionate healthcare experts to provide training and content which is significant to the African context. We have an international footprint where we collaborate with a number of business and academic partners including La Trobe University Australia, ESCASON, and regulators like Nurses Council of Zimbabwe.
Our Mission
To empower health workers in Africa by bridging the healthcare divide between Africa and the rest of the world and strengthening trust, service delivery between healthcare systems and the public through the use of digital technologies
Our Vision
To be a referenced provider of world class medical education leading to the delivery of improved health outcomes in Africa
Our core values
We collaborate with all healthcare workers regardless of religion, race, gender or locality.
We respect all healthcare workers as individuals with beliefs, cultures, aspirations and commitments in life, and seek to understand their priorities, needs, abilities and limitations
We are committed to improving quality of care by using inclusive cost effective technologies
We believe in the strength in numbers to maximize our resources for the benefit of everyone.
We pioneer world class accessible solutions
THE VAKA STORY
Where we come from
Globally more than half of the population does not have easy access to essential healthcare services. This is due to a critical shortfall of healthcare workers mostly in low and lower-middle income countries with Africa being the hardest hit. Chronic under-investment in education and training of healthcare workers is contributing the most to these ongoing shortages. There has been little coordinated effort to innovate new ways of delivering continuing professional development to healthcare workers in a cost-effective and sustainable way.
All improvements begin with questions, Why? What if? Why not? Change results from the belief in a future of possibilities. A future in which technology, artificial intelligence and human knowledge can be collaborated to improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare delivery in Africa through empowering our healthcare professionals with education and training
Where we stand
As VAKA Health we provide world class continuing medical professional development and education to healthcare workers in resource limited communities of Africa. We are playing a decisive role in the unprecedented transformation of the healthcare delivery system of Africa by encouraging accredited professional development and education using appropriate fourth industrial revolution technology. We are also offering expert professional career development, professional networking opportunities and career pathway options to our healthcare professionals not just for Africa but for the rest of the world! We are committed to playing an active role in solving one of Africa’s complex healthcare delivery challenges which is knowledge gaps.
Where we are heading
Continuous professional development and education of healthcare workers is the key to shaping change and improvement of the healthcare delivery system in Africa. We aim to continue delivering this critical medical professional health care education based on a sustainable social enterprise model. VAKA networks and experts will ensure the provision of more solutions to make Africa a healthier place. We will put our healthcare workers’ educational needs as our first priority and we will establish a network of knowledge dissemination communities. A fundamental transformation of this magnitude requires team work, tireless endeavour and the courage to seize opportunities and propel progress. Join us in making Africa a better, healthier place!
By 2025 we are going to be the best platform to deliver accredited and quality assured Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and professional Courses in Africa to Health Care Workers. We will offer vastly improved remote online and off-line learning using appropriate technology which is easily accessible to everyone. Talent Identification and development (CV management/ professional career management) will also be a service available on our platform. We will host annual clinical reference group healthcare conferences for protocols and guidelines development. We will also broadcast instant updates of essential health information to our healthcare workers and provide clinical decision support all with the aim of improving population health.
VAKA Health foundation is going to be the place where education is revolutionalized and healthcare workers are empowered to deliver high quality healthcare services through deployment of digital technologies and learning networks. These networks will connect healthcare workers from the richest communities down to the poorest communities thus closing knowledge gaps in the African healthcare system. We are going to stand for equal education opportunities for all healthcare workers despite of location.
Our impact
VAKA has an initial focus on Zimbabwe, where it has provided accredited professional development courses for nurses in partnership with the Nurses Council of Zimbabwe and the Ministry of Health and Child care through its pilot project called MYCPDZW. This web based mobile application has already been successfully rolled out to health care workers in Zimbabwe before and during the Covid 19 pandemic. More than 80% of healthcare professionals in the country have completed at least 3 – 4 modules translating to more than 300,000 Continuous Professional Development (CPD) activities over a period of 2 years. Registered nurses have managed to renew their Practicing licences online using MYCPDZW platform. For more information visit the website www.mycpdzw.org.
We are on track to build a network of healthcare workers who support each other by leveraging on technology, partnership, strength in numbers and local context specific knowledge.
Primary Health Care is delivered by healthcare workers (mainly Nurses and Village health workers) who work in remote areas caring for people living under $2US per day. These workers are isolated and have no access to decision support tools and they must travel for basic professional development training. VAKA has built solutions for them to have access to technology enhanced education, algorithmic protocols, clinical decision support tools such as national guidelines and standardized continuous professional development activities. This is vastly improving the quality of healthcare service delivery. Delivering of quality health education has the potential to fast track vastly improved holistic outcomes for health in a cost-effective manner