The strategies and practices that improve healthcare in Africa may become the very strategies and practices that are effective on a global scale. This is the basic hypothesis that we will explore in our course. In this video, Tanja Hammel and Doris Osei Afriyie introduce you to questions that will guide you on this journey.

The central question of this course is: How can knowledge from Africa contribute to improving health globally? To answer this question, we need to assess insights from different fields of expertise.

For example, historians can analyse how knowledge is circulated. Experts in the field of public health can explain the intricacies of drug and vaccine development or how health economists analyse a health system. Specialists in urban planning can help us understand the connections between environment and public health.

This is why our course brings together a lot of expertise from different viewpoints. With these experts’ help, we will be able to find an answer to our central question.

When we speak of the African continent in this course, by no means do we want to generalise the regional specificities and make it appear as if Africa was a country. It simply helps us to bring together the different sites and projects in our larger project and allows us to present case studies from different countries.

This course is the result of an interdisciplinary research project called “African Contributions to Global Health: Circulating Knowledge and Innovation”. It was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. As we will discover, the researchers involved in it come from different fields, backgrounds and origins.

As you watch your lead educators Tanja Hammel and Doris Osei Afriyie welcome you to this course, think about the following questions: Right now, at the beginning of this course, how do you think experiences in Africa help to solve key questions of health globally? How have African scientists, doctors, nurses, and other experts contributed to medical knowledge? What comes to mind? Make a note of your answers. As you work your way through the course, your answer may change; observe how these changes happen.

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