NGO - The World Continuing Education Alliance

WCEA for Africa, Asia & the Middle East

Projects & Partners

If you have a project requiring access to nurses, midwives, or doctors, please contact us to find out how we can help

The WCEA network comprises of more than 522.100 nurses, midwives, and doctors, throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. If you need to reach this target audience, with the specific motivation to improve healthcare, we can help you do that.

2020 has changed the landscape for training and events. If you are running a health-related conference or webinar, we can not only host it for you, we can attract the attendees.

Field studies and surveys

Webinars

Live events & conferences

Awareness

Research

Detailed Understanding

Whether you want us to help you run a webinar, conference, deliver education, or undertake a field study, we can do this in a highly targeted fashion.

A wealth of demographic information is retained about each healthcare professional, including age, experience, gender, location, employment status and many others. This helps us ensure that we maximize the impact of the communications and deliver relevant results.

There are multiple methods of engaging with the healthcare professionals, with over 445.200 of them subscribed to mobile notifications. These include our community platform, mobile app messages, emails, SMS and WhatsApp.

IDM 2022

MIDWIFERY EDUCATOR CPD PROGRAMME

As part of the ‘AIME: Alliance to Improve Midwifery Education’ project, LSTM’s Quality of Care unit in collaboration with the UNFPA Midwifery branch, in collaboration with the Nursing Council of Kenya, and midwifery educators in Kenya, has developed the first blended learning midwifery educator CPD package for sustaining and improving the educators’ competencies in the delivery of their teaching, assessments, mentoring and feedback to students.

This CPD package is linked to the ICM essential competencies for midwifery practice and meets the requirements of Nursing and Midwifery Councils in low- and middle-income countries such as Kenya.

This package will be delivered through mandatory online learning on the World Continuing Education Alliance portal, optional webinars, and face-to-face sessions focusing on upskilling midwifery educators on practical aspects of teaching clinical skills.

UPDATES

NEW SERIES OF E-LEARNING RESOURCES LAUNCHES ON KEY LIFE SAVING SKILLS

Global Launch of CPD modules to bring providers up to date on the latest evidence on key maternal newborn health topics. These resources can be used for strengthening pre-service education and also for Continuing Professional Development (CPD). They are now available globally via the WCEA App.

The 4 e-courses cover the following topics: Sepsis; Prolonged and Obstructed Labor; Postpartum Hemorrhage; Pre-Eclampsia and Eclampsia. Since the launch, 33.390 courses have been taken.

The online modules and mobile app is open to all healthcare providers and is available in English, with Spanish, French, and Portuguese versions released very shortly.

IMPROVING THE EDUCATION

BLENDED LEARNING INITIATIVE WITH LSTM

Improving the quality of maternal and newborn care is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal targets for maternal and newborn health. A key component of this is ensuring that the skilled health providers in place are competent and confident to provide such care. The Emergency Obstetric Care and Quality of Care unit at LSTM work with partners to improve the quality of pre-service midwifery and medical education and continuous professional education systems for skilled health providers, midwifery, and medical faculty.

To increase the reach of the educational opportunities we provide, we have partnered with the World Continuing Education Alliance (WCEA).

The project involves 3 component parts e-learning, live virtual training with LSTM experts, and live clinical in Kenya.

STARTED SEPTEMBER 13TH, 2021

FOR NURSES AND MIDWIVES IN GHANA

Ghana College for Nurses and Midwives, Nursing & Midwifery Council of Ghana and Sick Kids Centre for Global Health

The COVID-19 response project is a continuation of the SickKids-Ghana Paediatric Nursing Education Partnership (PNEP), a partnership between The Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives (GCNM) and the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health with financial support from the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada. The courses were developed in collaboration with key stakeholders including Ghana Health Service (GHS), the Ministry of Health, Ghana, and the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Ghana (N&MC) who shared their expertise and experience to develop the high-quality courses. COVID-19 has highlighted the critical need for a cadre of well-trained health professionals in front-line care delivery to reduce preventable mortality and improve the well-being of children and their families.

A key activity in this project is the development of online Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses that provide health care professionals in Ghana with knowledge and skills to care for patients in the COVID-19 era. The suite of courses titled ‘COVID-19 in Ghana ‘Promoting Physical & Mental Health of Children, Families, and Health Workers’ include the topics of health prevention and promotion, child and adolescent health, vaccine communication and behaviour change, all eligible for CPD points.

To ensure the courses are accessible to as many users across Ghana as possible, the WCEA platform has been selected to host the courses. The WCEA platform enables users to download the course, so there is no dependency on a stable internet connection promoting equitable access. In addition, WCEA’s platform already has over 158.400 health care workers on the platform in Ghana. We look forward to more health care workers registering and taking up the courses and building their capacity in response to COVID-19.

TWINNING PROJECT

WCEA PLATFORM MAKING TRAINING RESOURCES MORE ACCESSIBLE TO MIDWIVES IN BANGLADESH

This program is in its 4th Year and it is part of a twinning project between the UNFPA and the Royal College of Midwives. WCEA is supporting the Bangladesh Midwifery Society with a technology platform to make training resources more accessible to midwives in Bangladesh.

The program is supported by training resources from the UN Agencies, Medical Aid Films, Global Health Media Projects, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and many others.

NEW PARTNERSHIP

COUNTRY EXPERIENCES IN SCALING UP HIV ORAL PRE-EXPOSURE PROPHYLAXIS

A new partnership is ensuring increased and improved access to high-quality education for frontline health workers. As part of Jhpiego’s commitment to reach health care providers worldwide with up-to-date skills and knowledge, and to make learning accessible anytime, anywhere, we’ve partnered with the World Continuing Education Alliance (WCEA) to host and share our eLearning content on its digital continuing professional development (CPD) platform. This partnership brings learning opportunities directly to the screens of health care providers wherever they are.

The project focus was coordinating a virtual CPD webinar on country Experiences in scaling up Oral Pre- Exposure Prophylaxis HIV in Africa. The webinar was attended by 1,680 number of healthcare providers in Africa.

WCEA was responsible for adapting the Oral Pre- Exposure Prophylaxis HIV module and ensuring it could be consumed by healthcare providers in Africa on a smartphone. The course was launched on the platform on 2nd of March 2021 and to date it has been taken by 30.480 number of healthcare providers in Africa.

COLLABORATION WITH WCEA

WHO AFRO & UNFPA & UNICEF ESARO

Achieving zero preventable maternal death by 2030 will remain an illusion unless the current efforts are accelerated three fold in the remaining 9 years. UNFPA ESARO along with WHO and UNICEF regional offices established a new partnership with a technology company World Continuing Education (WCEA) in September 2020 to scale up and speed up our action on building capacity of midwives and nurses by using digital learning platforms. Launched a collaboration with a technology company WCEA (World Continuity Education Alliance) on virtual learning through ELearning modules which reached about 31.100 health workers in the last months (3.560 through webinar and 27.540 through ELearning).

Results achieved:

– New partnership was established with WCEA and the 3 UN Agencies in the ESARO region as a digital platform. WCEA, similar to the UN agencies, believes in leveraging partnerships & technology for capacity building and scaling up in the training of healthcare providers. WCEA comes with a reach of nearly 502,000 nurses and midwives in Africa which WCEA trained since its launch in January 2020 with over 4.2 million courses taken. WCEA also brings in broader partnership where WCEA works with providers such as Jhpiego, Maternity Foundation, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, American Academy of Pediatrics, Aga Khan SONAM and UoP.

– Before the partnership with WCEA, the three UN agencies have conducted 13 bimonthly webinars from April 2020 to September 2020 reaching a total of 1,500 participants. While using the WCEA platform it was possible to reach 3,320 participants in just 3 webinars organized between February and March 2021. This shows the enormous reach of the WCEA platform and the ability to easily connect with healthcare providers across Africa.

The modules are all available in English, French & Portuguese.

To date, the course “Introduction to WHO Labour Care Guide” has been completed by 37.660 learners.

CASE STUDY

COVID RESPONSE

As COVID-19 spread across the globe, we at the Johnson & Johnson Center for Health Worker Innovation began strategizing how to support frontline health workers in low- and mid-income settings. One early result was the formation of a new collective partnership with funding from the Johnson & Johnson Foundation among three of our partners, The World Continuing Education Alliance (WCEA), The Aga Khan University School of Nursing and Midwifery East Africa (AKU) and the International Council of Nurses (ICN).

Together, we set out to design a mechanism to deliver vital training and education opportunities to frontline health workers managing dual imperatives: to prevent and treat COVID-19 while also providing primary health care amidst a potentially devastating interruption of health services, particularly in already fragile health systems.