Two King's global health partnerships shortlisted for Health Service Journal Awards
Two of King’s global health partnerships, King’s Sierra Leone Partnership and King’s Somaliland Partnership, have been shortlisted for the prestigious Health Service Journal (HSJ) Awards in the ‘International Health Partnership’ category.
The HSJ Awards are the largest celebration of excellence in UK healthcare, highlighting the most innovative and successful people and projects in the sector, so being named on the shortlist is a huge achievement.
King’s Somaliland Partnership was founded in 2000 and is one of the UK’s longest running global health partnerships, involving hundreds of NHS volunteers and Somaliland health workers. The partnership works collaboratively to build Somaliland and UK health workforce capacity. NHS volunteers deliver education and training programmes based on needs identified by Somaliland partner experts and aligned to Somaliland curricula. Their most significant results to date include:
- Examining every doctor and BSc Nurse to have graduated since Somaliland’s founding
- Introducing mental health into the medical curriculum and delivering basic psychiatry training to all new doctors
- Developing Somaliland’s first online Sexually Transmitted Infection programme
- Establishing Somaliland’s first Master’s in Health Education
King’s Sierra Leone Partnership was established in 2011 to help build Sierra Leone’s health system by strengthening training, clinical services, policy and research and responding directly to the country’s health needs in partnership with local organisations. Their most significant results in Sierra Leone include:
- Restoring the country’s first oxygen factory to provide piped high-flow oxygen, reducing mortality rates in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) by 20%
- Integrating Early Warning Scores into hospital care, improving vital sign monitoring from an estimated 14% baseline to 75% in May 2017
- Launching a new medical records system at Connaught Hospital
- Developing referral procedures for the first psychosocial support unit at a general hospital.
The HSJ Awards take place on 22 November in London.