Photo by WHO AFRO Ghana
Professor Peter Waiswa, the project director of the Digital Health Payment Initiative and Research in Africa (DHPI-R) project, recently joined the World Health Organization's (WHO) Digital Finance Team (DFT) at a four-day retreat in Akosombo, Ghana to discuss the future of digital payments in healthcare.
The WHO African Region Digital Finance Team (DFT), established in May 2020, is responsible for developing innovative payment solutions.
The retreat, themed "The Digital Finance Corporate Strategy: A Cashless WHO AFRO Region Retreat " took place between July 10 -13, 2023 was the third annual gathering.
The aim of the retreat was to review and document progress and lessons learned from digital payments implementation efforts since July 2022 and create a new strategy to accelerate the implementation of WHO AFRO’s digital finance strategy.
At the retreat, participants, including representatives from WHO AFRO and partner organizations, discussed and focused on drawing from the experiences of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. These experiences served as a foundation for crafting a broader strategy to expand digital payments within the healthcare sector.
Prof. Waiswa says the meeting was good, enabled him to meet with partners and get to know them, to learn about what they are doing, impact created, share experiences from our work but also to mobilize connections. During the meeting, we contributed to reviewing the WHO strategic plan on digitized payments," added Prof. Waiswa.
Since its inception, WHO’s DFT has designed and deployed digital payment ecosystems in 20 countries in Africa. Notably, one million workers have been enrolled in health workers' databases, and over half a million polio workers have received their payments through mobile money.
Digital payment systems have proven to be powerful tools for streamlining healthcare services. The retreat aimed to harness their potential for the benefit of communities across the continent.
By Judith Grace Amoit