Burkina Faso Public Health Institute Visits French and Belgian Peers
Burkina Faso’s new national public health institute visited two member institutes, the French Public Health Agency and Sciensano, Belgium’s NPHI.
IANPHI’s peer-to-peer collaboration model facilitates sharing of expertise and experience among member NPHIs. Recipient NPHIs benefit from peer-to-peer collaboration by identifying strategies to address priority needs, and raising performance standards for organizing and conducting public health functions. Contributing institutes also benefit from peer-to-peer collaboration by sharing skills and assets to benefit others while also linking resources and solutions to address regional and global health threats and opportunities.
In July 2019, six leaders of Burkina Faso’s new national public health institute visited two member institutes, the French Public Health Agency and Sciensano, Belgium’s NPHI. During the trip, the delegation was able to tour both institutes, the emergency operation center (EOC) in France, and the laboratory in Belgium.
High-level conversations centered around NPHI structure, establishment, and functions. Management and governance, internal control, national reference laboratories management, emergency response management, internal communications and research were also discussed.
“We have achieved our goals,” said Dr. Hervé Hien, director general of the Burkina Faso NPHI. “Everything that we had listed as areas of interest for the visit were taken into account in the program and treated well.”
This article was published in IANPHI Insider #4 (November 2019).