Significant progress on ABS international partnerships

The Matabeleland South project, which partners with United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH), is now in its' sixth year. The project aims to promote early breast cancer diagnosis and facilitate treatment pathways, primarily through building capacity at the primary health worker level and increasing breast cancer awareness in the community. Prof Dick Rainsbury and Munyaradzi Magara, the project co-leads, visited political stakeholders and NGOs in Bulawayo and Harare in June. They were able to explore funding opportunities and ensure continued alignment with national health programs which will be crucial for the sustainability of the project. Maria Bews-Hair, Caroline Strachan and Lis Grimsey visited Bulawayo in July to conduct a week long impact assessment with a view to identifying opportunities for strengthening the program. This coincided with a nurses course which was developed and delivered by local nurses following training through ABS and is now fully sustainable. They were joined by four more faculty members in August - Prof John Benson, Fiona Tsang-Wright, Simon Allan and Elizabeth Smyth. The team conducted a surgical training master class and an ultrasound course, both of which were well received. Prof Jenny Edge has been working with Charity Mutetwa, a lead nurse and former recipient of an ABS fellowship, in developing a Breast Nursing Diploma to be delivered by the School of Nursing at UBH. A pilot day for stakeholders provided valuable feedback on the proposed diploma and also on a Training the Trainers course. The project continues with a plan to obtain formal approval for the Breast Nursing Diploma and progress work on developing referral pathways and guidelines. 

The Global Breast Cancer Training Program has been developed through a partnership between ABS, Global Health Partnerships (formerly known as THET), Cancer Diseases Hospital Lusaka (CDH), the Ugandan Cancer Institute Kampala (UCI) and Blended Learning UK (BLUK) with funding from Sanofi. The project has produced a tiered program of training aimed at equipping senior doctors and nurses (Master Trainers) with materials for training practitioners at primary health worker level who can then train community health workers and communities in breast cancer awareness. The program combines on line and face to face learning with a focus on breast cancer knowledge, skills facilitating decentralisation of care and mentorship and is fully aligned with the WHO Global Breast Cancer Initiative. The training package is currently being piloted in Zambia and Uganda with a view to extending it to other LMICs if successful. All tiers have now completed training, amounting to over 1000 health workers across all levels. In early September, five teams of ABS volunteers attended training camps for community health workers in Mbarara (Rajiv Dave, Lis Grimsey) and Arua (Janet Hicks, Rose Alenyo) in Uganda and Livingstone (Amy Robinson, Naren Basu), Lusaka Province (Vicki Harmer, Nick Hobbs) and Copperbelt (Sarah Downey, Mina Youssef) in Zambia. Their work, combined with the evaluations conducted by local teams, will allow for further revisions before the pilot ends in 2026.