NHS: Global Health

Baroness Cox Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cox]

My Lords, I, too, warmly thank my noble friend for introducing this important debate so comprehensively. In declaring an interest as an honorary vice-president of the Royal College of Nursing, I will focus on nursing education for global health and I have some positive developments to report.

First, at pre-registration level, the Nursing and Midwifery Council has stated that,

“Some aspects of the programme might be undertaken outside the UK for up to six months”,

and many universities are now taking advantage of this opportunity for placements abroad. Post-registration, there is a wide variety of continuing professional courses for nurses in global health issues, including the diploma in tropical nursing and the diploma in reproductive health in developing countries at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, in which I also declare an interest as an honorary vice-president.

Sheffield University also runs an online masters programme in midwifery and maternity care, fostering many international links and contacts. VSO offers nurses opportunities to work in countries such as Cambodia, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Malawi; and nurses are given extensive training prior to their placement. The VSO’s Skills for Working in Development course is accredited by the Royal College of Nursing. At PhD level, the International Network for Doctoral Education in Nursing and the European Academy of Nursing Science offer many opportunities for research exchanges in global health and international collaboration.

I should briefly like to give one practical example of nursing’s contribution to healthcare in this context. I returned just two weeks ago from a visit with my small NGO, the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, to the hill tribe people in Chin state in Burma. They are of course suffering at the hands of that country’s brutal military regime, but many people in Chin’s hill tribes in remote areas are denied access to any healthcare at all. An outstanding young man from Chin state grew up seeing women die in childbirth on kitchen tables, and children dying unnecessarily from diarrhoea because of lack of access to healthcare and lack of any health knowledge. He was determined to become a doctor. He qualified in Armenia and immediately returned, having overcome many difficulties as a doctor, and is now training 315 community health workers from villages deep inside Chin state, where there is no healthcare. As much of this training could be undertaken equally effectively by community nurses and midwives, I introduced this resourceful young doctor to the College of Nursing in Mizoram state in India, where the staff are deeply interested in remote-area primary healthcare and have become interested in his programme. Nurses from the United Kingdom are very willing to help to train these community health workers, who are taking back life-saving knowledge and healthcare to the villages that previously had nothing. Many lives have already been saved.

I ask the Minister whether Her Majesty’s Government will continue to support the nursing profession’s capability to respond to global healthcare needs, both in educational initiatives and in practical terms, such as in international partnerships and secondments, to which reference has been made in the medical field, to those developing countries. Secondments benefit those in the developing countries and employers here in the United Kingdom, because practitioners return with enhanced initiative, knowledge, skills and experience—particularly those which transcend cultural borders.

I could give many other examples from our experiences Sudan, Nigeria and East Timor inter alia, but I hope that the example I have given from Burma reinforces the importance of this significant subject raised by my noble friend.