Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về sinh học được đăng trên tạp chí sinh học quốc tế đề tài : Building capacity without disrupting health services: public health education for Africa through distance learning | Human Resources for Health BioMed Central Open Access Review Building capacity without disrupting health services public health education for Africa through distance learning Lucy Alexander Ehi Uche Igumbor and David Sanders Address School of Public Health University of the Western Cape Bellville South Africa Email Lucy Alexander - lalexander@ Ehi Uche Igumbor - eigumbor@ David Sanders - sandersdav@ Corresponding author Published I April 2009 Received 12 February 2008 Human Resources for Health 2009 7 28 doi 1478-4491-7-28 Accepted 1 April 2009 This article is available from http content 7 1 28 2009 Alexander et al licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http licenses by which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract The human resources crisis in Africa is especially acute in the public health field. Through distance education the School of Public Health of the University of the Western Cape South Africa has provided access to master s level public health education for health professionals from more than 20 African countries while they remain in post. Since 2000 interest has increased overwhelmingly to a point where four times more applications are received than can be accommodated. This homegrown programme remains sensitive to the needs of the target learners while engaging them in high-quality learning applied in their own work contexts. This brief paper describes the innovative aspects of the programme offering some evaluative indications of its impact and reviews how the delivery of text-led distance learning has facilitated the realization of the objectives of public health training. Strategies are proposed for scaling up such a programme to meet the growing need in this essential area of health
