Right now, just about to start the new academic year, I would like to use this occasion to inform you of a training event we are particularly proud of: the first Nurse-Midwifery Specialization course in the Bié province in Angola, which has provided the first promotion of 34 nurses specialized in maternal and child health, in one of the country’s most populated provinces, with one of the highest mortality rates among mothers and infants, mainly due to a lack of health care during pregnancy, labour, delivery and postpartum, among other aspects.

Nurses coming from all municipalities in the province have followed the specialization course at the School for the Training of Healthcare Technicians in Bié. After a training period with theoretical classes and practical sessions, they will join their workplaces in the Healthcare Units of the province, hospitals as well as peripheral healthcare centres, in order to provide care to women and infants in the area, thus contributing to the reduction of the mortality rate and other problematic issues related to maternity in a country where circa 11,000 deaths are annually estimated on this account.

For medicusmundi, as well as for the Government of Angola and its Ministry of Health, with which this course was co-developed, healthcare workers’ training is key to the construction of quality public healthcare systems, capable of addressing the needs of the population and thus guaranteeing its right to health. The adequate training of its human resources and the capacity of retaining them inside the country and within the public healthcare system, are some of the challenges the Ministries of Health in developing countries (and recently even countries like Spain) are to address.

This training is organised within the framework of a broader project devised to the strengthening of Primary Health Care funded by the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation for Development (AECID), and other authorities like the City of Sant Cugat del Vallès, implemented in Angola and Mozambique (where an Intermediate level Vocational Training for Nurses is also being implemented) and which envisages as well the construction of infrastructures, the improvement in planning and management and the support to priority programmes for the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights and health education

For now, we leave you with the images of that course, where you can see the just-graduated nurses proudly receiving their diplomas on the closing event held last March in presence of a number of local authorities, local media, teaching staff and relatives in what resulted in a big festive event acknowledging and honouring the efforts of all the people and institutions involved, and above all, the trainees. We wish this is not going to become the only promotion of nurses being trained, and that the School for the Training of Healthcare Technicians would continue to provide the Healthcare Units in the Province with qualified professionals.

Congratulations to all graduates!