Developing Strategies to coordinate HEalthcare provision between The GAmbia and Senegal (SHEGAS)
Medical Research Council
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
An increasingly mobile global population (there were an estimated 1 billion international and national migrants in 2019) poses challenges to policymakers, who must ensure their health systems can provide good quality healthcare to an increasing number of patients with diverse health needs. This is a particular challenge for policymakers in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC), particularly those in Africa, who already have over-stretched health systems, and who face fast-increasing rates of population mobility. This is particularly critical in the time of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. However, there is little relevant literature LMIC policymakers can draw on to inform their decisions. This research will adopt a participatory approach to co-develop a health systems strategy to coordinate people movement between The Gambia and Senegal - two countries with close political ties, a common pre-colonial history, and a different colonial and post-colonial history, leading to different political systems and official languages. We will adopt a mixed methods approach to first of all determine the volume of cross-border healthcare use, the influence of history on current population mobility and healthcare provision and use, to examine pre-exisiting formal and informal coordination mechanisms between different West African countries (including The Gambia and Senegal), and to explore the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on cross-border health system coordination. We will use this information to co-develop a health system-wide strategy for responding to cross-border movement of patients between The Gambia and Senegal, in collaboration with policymakers from both countries, through the use of participatory multi-criteria mapping approach.
8.1 Organisation and delivery of services / Research Grant