Health leaders in Senegal and EGH partner to share lessons from the country’s health successes

Senegal and Exemplars in Global Health have established a partnership to widely promote lessons from the West African country's notable health successes.

Under the partnership, Exemplars in Global Health (EGH) will help disseminate lessons and best practices from Senegal in key areas of public health, including vaccine delivery, child health, stunting, and neonatal and maternal mortality. EGH will also help health leaders in Senegal improve their use of data in health policy, strategy, and operational decisions. This is in addition to EGH's ongoing support of national policymakers across the continent by strengthening national and international networking opportunities.

“The Ministry of Health and Social Action of Senegal is proud to partner with Exemplars in Global Health and looks forward to building on this collaboration to foster peer-to-peer regional learning, drive adoption of best practices, and accelerate progress across priority global health areas. We believe strongly that sharing evidence of what has worked well in Senegal will help accelerate change across the region and we are committed to working with our partners to leverage our research towards this end,” Senegal’s Minister of Health and Social Action Dr. Marie Khemesse Ngom Ndiaye said in a statement.

The ministry and EGH also agreed to work together to advance health priorities with a consortium of development partners. “At Exemplars in Global Health, we are convinced that effective responses to current and future public health challenges will depend on our capacity to share knowledge and learn from each other’s successes. As we move toward building more resilient health systems that can tackle high-burden diseases, it is imperative that we promote dialogue and knowledge sharing,” EGH's Managing Director, Dr. Niranjan Bose said in the same statement.

EGH brings together experts, funders, and collaborators around the globe with the mission of identifying countries that have demonstrated exemplary performance in public health, analyzing what makes them successful, and disseminating core learnings so they can be adapted in comparable settings. The program's research in Senegal has been supported by numerous partners, including Cheikh Anta Diop University, the African Population and Health Research Center, Institut de Technologie Alimentaire, Conseil National De Développement de la Nutrition, and L’Institut de Recherche en Santé, and de Surveillance Épidémiologique et de Formations.

Senegal has significantly strengthened its health system and improved health outcomes over the past several decades due in part to increases in vaccine coverage, as well as improved nutrition, education, and water and sanitation initiatives the late 1990s and early 2000s. Senegal has notably leveraged its robust Bajenu Gox community health worker network to boost immunization services, especially among children. The country has now become a model for other West African nations, including some with higher gross domestic products and levels of income. For instance, the country reduced its rate of child mortality by 56 percent, from 117 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 52 in 2015 and reduced its childhood stunting rate from 34 percent to 17 percent between 1992 and 2017.