By Precious D. Freeman
The U.S President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR) has recently handed 430 textbooks over to the Liberian Board of Nursing and Midwifery in order to improve their educational capacity with curricula that meet current reality in the 21st century for effective teaching.
During the program the representative for PEPFAR Michael McCarthy said PEPFAR started in 2003 and is the largest contribution to a single disease ever made by a country, adding that PEPFAR now in its 18th year supports antiretroviral treatment for nearly 17.2 million people.
According to him, they had enabled 2.8 million babies to be born HIV-free to mothers living with the virus and has provided critical care and support for 6.7 million orphans, vulnerable children and their caregivers so they can survive and thrive.
He added that through their implementing partners they are supporting internal medicine residency training including infectious disease sub-specialty training, family medicine residency training, broad support for nursing and midwifery, which includes support to LBNM, rural training for medicine resident s and nursing and midwifery students and support to the medical school.
“Today we celebrate one aspect of this broad support and I can’t imagine studying nurses and midwifery and not having current textbooks and not having enough high quality resources for learning but with these 430 textbooks your country now stands to gain from better training nurses and midwives because of this modest investment, “he said.
The representative for PEPFAR explained that PEPFAR is also making a big investment in the national HIV response in Liberia and US agencies like USAID, CDC and HRSA administer their support and provide oversight and technical assistance but the work is performed by their partners, adding that the New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing is the partner responsible for working with stakeholders to make it a success.
The Secretary for LBNM, Cecelia C. Kpangbala said the Resilience and Response for Health System Initiative as well as the Resilience and Response Health Organization Initiative were all launched by PEPFAR in 2007 to support Liberia’s health workforce program and over the last four years it had been our honor to partner with LBNM among other institution in order to increaser the number of graduates and strengthen the quality of training.
She emphasized that textbooks are such an essential and timely investment as the new nursing and midwifery curricula are been rolled out; she extends her appreciation to PEPFAR and others adding that at least 14 institutions benefitted from the textbooks.
“By receiving these textbooks it will provide every institution the access to all of the curricula on time for use and opportunity for our students and staff to interact with the team and educate them on how to incorporate and use the curricula for our programs, “she said.