Vital international work carried out by RHCH in Winchester was praised in the House of Commons on Thursday 5th July by Steve Brine.
The Winchester MP paid tribute to Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HHFT), which operates both RHCH and Basingstoke Hospital, over their work on two projects, Yei in South Sudan and Hoima in Uganda.
The projects include work on antibiotic resistance, looking at bacteria that cause pneumonia, and identifying resistant strains that help direct antibiotic therapy, which Mr Brine recognised as rightly getting a lot of attention as the Government works to refresh its antimicrobial strategy.
Other areas of work which the projects have undertaken also included a collaboration with Winchester Rotary and Winchester-based charity Brickworks, in securing funding for text books to repopulate a midwifery and lab training institution, funding to build schools for South Sudanese refugees in Uganda so that refugee children can continue primary and secondary education, and funding for at least one South Sudanese student to complete a three-year postgraduate diploma in public health.
In addition, further successes included a range of training, as well as training and outreach work around paediatrics and maternity.
Steve Brine was responding as Public Health Minister to a Westminster Hall debate called by Jim Shannon MP, who said that the World Health Organisation estimated that half the world's population had a lack of access to essential healthcare services, and around 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty by healthcare expenses.
Mr Brine told the hall that the health of UK citizens is not dependent only on action in the UK, as diseases do not respect borders, and that we need to act internationally to protect ourselves as well as to help others.
He said that the Government was committed to delivering the sustainable development goals, which are crucial to tackling many other health challenges, including the improvement of maternal, newborn and child health, as well as specific diseases such as TB, HIV, malaria and pneumonia, the single largest infectious cause of death in children worldwide.
Mr Brine also set out how his Department has taken on a global leadership role on patient safety, along with our German and Japanese counterparts, because the aim cannot just be universal healthcare but must be good-quality and safe universal healthcare, alongside mental health, where the Government will host the first global ministerial mental health summit this October.
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