← GovDiscovery AI Podcast with Mike Shanley
GovDiscovery AI Podcast with Mike Shanley
Ep 37: Dr. Jerry Brown, TIME Magazine Person of the Year, Ebola Response, Global Health, and Aid Donors
00:57:38
Dr. Jerry Brown, TIME Person of the Year, joins Mike Shanley to discuss Dr. Brown's work during the Ebola crisis, COVID-19 response and lessons learned for global pandemic preparedness, becoming TIME Person of the Year, and the role of international...
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Aid Market Podcast where foreign aid partners connect to learn about key funding trends and market insight. The podcast is co hosted by Aid Connect Data, the pipeline and market intel software for USAID partnering and Connected International, the leading USAID partnering support consulting firm. Now here's your host, Mike Shanley.
- [00:27]
B
Gorma. Welcome to the Aid Market Podcast. We're very excited to have your organization co hosting our conversation today with Dr. Brown. Could you share with our listeners a bit of the important work that you and your team are doing in global health in West Africa and particularly in Liberia?
- [00:45]
C
Yeah, thanks. First of all, I want to say thanks for the opportunity, Mike, for taking time to talk about the work that we're doing in Liberia. Care Africa Medical foundation is a nonprofit focused on health. We started out as just a visit, my husband and I. And then we realized there was a major need in the county that we're from. We say county, the USA state. So in Grand Bossa county where we were born and raised, we realized there was a need for health. The only governmental hospital in that region had burned down more than twice before. I will visit. So we decided to start conducting free health fairs and school buildings and all of that when we leave, people still have needs. It was not enough, so we needed to do more. So when the opportunity presented itself for facility, we went ahead and rented it, renovated it and opening our first medical center in Grand Basel. Coming the spring of 2025, we'll be opening it in March. The health center will focus on we have a female ward, we have women children ward, we have a male ward, small or labor and delivery, each ed department, full laboratory and full pharmacy and outpatient as well. We'll be conducting some outreach. Bukana is a very vibrant city, but health needs there is very vast. So we decided to help out. The best way that we can is more touching to us because it's home. I know the next door neighbor, they know my family. I know the road that I used to walk to go to school. So it's personal for us then meeting Dr. Brown was just a plus to be able to join the team and help out the best way that he can with surgeries and just oversight as well.
- [03:00]
B
That's great and looking forward to that conversation. Could you share with our listeners how they can best support your organization and how they can connect with you and your team?
- [03:09]
C
Okay, so we are on Facebook, we're on LinkedIn, it's called Care Africa Medical Foundation. I can be reached. The contact would be in the link as well. For our contact information to be able to reach us. Right now our focus is just trying to get this facility up and running, fully equipped with every necessary things that we need on the line of helping. Just picture a building with nothing in it right now. So it's fully done, all the rooms are there, they're ready for our operations. But we're in need of supplies, equipment, consumable volunteers that want to go to Africa, help, teach, educate. All of those opportunities are available for people to help. If someone is interested, they can reach us and we'll be able to partner with them.
- [04:08]
B
Wonderful. So anyone, doctors, medical professionals that want to volunteer, anyone with high quality surplus medical supplies and or consumables to reach out to your team through the website.
- [04:20]
C
Exactly. Through our website. The easy email address is infoinfo@camd foundation.org Great. So infoamed.foundation.org Great.
- [04:38]
B
And for anyone connected with me on LinkedIn too, feel free just to message me and go and help put them in touch with your team as well.
- [04:43]
C
Yes, yes.
- [04:44]
D
Great.
- [04:45]
B
Well, since truly, thank you for the important work you do for the people of Liberia and thank you for setting up and co hosting this important conversation today with Dr. Brown where we'll talk about a bit of the work he'll be doing with your organization as well as the other important work that he's done in the past. So thank you very much for joining us today.
- [05:03]
C
Thank you, Mike.
- [05:03]
B
Thank you, Dr. Brown. Welcome to the Aid Market podcast. It's a privilege to have you here today and I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while to learn from your important experience in global health work in West Africa and in Liberia specifically, but also to hear your thoughts for global health professionals around the world and what lessons we can learn from the ebola crisis from COVID 19 to be better prepared for the next pandemic and for the next the global health needs of the future. So to start, could you please share a bit about your experience and the important work you and your team did during the Ebola crisis in West Africa.
- [05:48]
D
Thank you, Matt, for having me. And it's an honor to be on your platform today. My name is Dr. Jerry Farlow Brown. I'm a general surgeon with public health background in healthcare policy management, married with three children, and my wife is one of my strengths in terms of support what I do. I'm happy to be here today. There are a lot of work we've done. To be specific, we want us to talk a little about the Ebola crisis. And I would tell you that during The Ebola crisis. Our primary goal was that of humanitarian to see how best we could help save lives because and contribute to the control of the epidemic at that time. And so it was not based upon monetary value that we could get in or some basic insurance coverage in terms of the danger we found ourselves in. Because none of such existed. What we felt we were to get involved Considering the threat the disease was posing to our community, our country and the war at large. And so our primary goal was of 2:1, to first see how we could vaccine for patients that were involved. And later we found ourselves involved in research at the till end of the crisis Looking at different therapeutics to see how they were effective in the care of patients that were brought to our center for care. It all started with our chapel. The chapel at that time was a small space built on campus. Not really a church, but in the form of a church where we went every morning from Monday to Friday to have morning devotions. And we used that to pass on messages to our employees at the Edoking hospital and to attempt to train. That's what the chapel was intended for. But when the crisis came about in it was difficult to. There was no time involved to construct an isolated unit or isolation unit and no time to think about where to get one. Then I was serving as the medical director for the UWA Hospital day. And it was challenging for the other administrators to have engaged me and said document what do we do now that we have such crisis on hand? The goal was having somewhere where we who isolate one of our staff and or isolate patients that we may have accidentally until we can have them transferred to centers that may be established by the government. Since it was a national crisis. So that was our thought initially. We need to realize that the isolation site we set up to serve the sole purpose of attending to our staff and or patients which has encountered suddenly to now being the first isolation unit in country. Because I remember when I first said to the team in the chapel that we're going to transform the chapel into an isolation unit. There were a lot of criticism, of course. What does he want to use our chapel as an isolation unit? He can't think of anything else. Now he wants to use his missionary to come up with things that doesn't make sense. But initially at the genesis of crisis, People who do not have vision don't see the future. So when you begin to tell them about impending danger, it doesn't make sense to them. And that's what was really happening. But went ahead despite the criticism, despite what people Said and went ahead and still kept the chapel. I remember many other institutions who attempted establishing isolation unit shut them down when the first case passed through Liberia in April and we managed to control that. So those eras were shot down. Oh, Ebola will continue in guinea and it's going to remain in Sara Lee. But there was one thing I said to my colleague, my missionary colleague and other senior management team. As long as we continue to have Ebola in Guinea and Sierra Leone, we stay in the mix of habit because of cross border activity. There are intermarriages between Liberians and Sierra Leone as well as Guineans. So when things get rough in those neighboring countries, there's a high likelihood that they'll come back home. And so it never took long. In June we have our first set of cases. And I remember being called by the Minister of health, Dave, Dr. Dan asked him whether we had shut down the assimilation unit we had at the center. And I said no, we still have it, we still have the checkpoint available. And that was the beginning of our involvement with Ebola patients. It was then that Ken Brindley, an American family medicine physician was asked to steer anything together with Dr. Deborah Arsenal, a general surgeon American also while remaining a hospital, conducting surgery, doing other medical activities with others because we all could not go into the unit there. Unfortunately for us, alcoholic bone infected and they had to evacuate them to the US that was we're still at the chapel and that is what is referred to as the EAW Ebola treatment unit. But the country later became overwhelming with the number of cases and the chapel began to receive. There were no beds now within the chapel. We had situations where we were waiting for another person to pass out to create their space for others that the Ministry of Health will call us to tell us about. And so the next thing was what do we do next now that we're running out of space? And so in our administrative decision discussions we decided to use the hospital laundry in the hospital kitchen to transform it into an isolation. As I said earlier, there's no room for construction. So the best option was to use available structures. So we then got a system from the Ministry of Health. And then look at the we're going to walk through the teaching and boundary with help from who we transform it into an isolation you're tackling within a week. And I remember it was within that week that Dr. Brennan got infected. Pastor Oni helped to transfer the first exhibitions date, but he was not around to continue working in the UWA 2 which was now the kitchen and laundry and this now, at this point, we could take up to 50 or more patients at one time, unlike the Chapo, where we could take between six and maximum of nine patients. And so Brainly and others had to leave. Then the situation became worse because there was now no doctor at the new unit we established to kind of provide direction and leadership on how to care for the patients and the way forward. All of the other doctors within the hospital were afraid. No one was willing. And the situation now was like, Look, Dr. O', Brien, you need to shut this hospital down. Because other hospitals were now closing. Used to shut the hospital down by the time they were closed and forget about offering services. But this, hear what I said to some of them, asked him a series of questions, look, they'll agree we shut the hospital down. Your wife or kids got sick at home and they did medical care. Will you treat them at home or where will you take them? But if you have this place open, you have a chance of having your loved one cared for or taken care of beside others if we shut the entire health system down. What happened to people with other disease conditions? Punitive people come in and want to give birth. People have other things, like topic pregnancy. We saw in our unit what happened to them. Do they all die because we have people in crisis? No, can't do that. And especially so when our American counterparts were willing and coming to make sacrifices and that of Dr. Sikra and others who came, I was like, why should we run away? And the others are there trying to help us and people coming from other places are coming in country now to help us. Doesn't make sense. We managed to talk to them. A few agreed. It was at that point that in June 19, and that was my first date of interim in the union. Then early July, mid July, I decided to leave things within the hospital for a while because the staff at the isolation unit had decided to move out. Some decided not going to work again until they understood how that Dobrele and others got infected. So there was no leadership. And then moved quickly, called a meeting and said, look, come, let's work together and see what we can do. It was challenging because my wife, of course, had told me already, don't join the team, come whack me, do not join the team, do not go into that unit. I say, yes, ma'. Am. And so for the first week, I formed myself into the union. My wife, I knew it. No, no. And I never told her. But I managed to get the team back together, spoke to them, so we can leave it as a Matter of fact, when we started, one good thing we did was that demi together with brothers train everyone within him facility on how to put on PPE protective garment safety measures between everyone, irrespective of your era of assignment, accounting, cleaner, technicians, everyone. So that when there's a need of shifting from somewhere else but you had to put on a tiger suit to get certain things done, it wouldn't be a strange thing. The other thing we learned was that it's good to make use of what's available to get things done while you wish for help. But do I mean we never had tabix suit to train one another whilst as a soldier and Debbie also assaulting. One thing we knew was to execute safety measures whenever we're conducting surgery. So we brought our oral gowns and began to teach people on how to safely wear the oral gown and kept safety and ensuring safety for the patients we attended. That's where we began and began to teach people look at a few policies from MSF and nowadays started going. And so when Dr. Brenner left we then begin to just read on other infection prevention measures that we saw online from WHO other places and begin to execute things because back then the WHO and others were still making plans. CDC USA orders still making plans how to come in. People were sick, people were dying, can't sit and wait for them to come in. So you had to do something. So with that in mind, we got started at the treatment unit they begin to provide here. What was astonishing initially was that the level of care provided to patients then for me as a surgeon, I've been learning about management of shock and seeing many of the patients presenting with the signs and symptoms of shock. That's the first thing that captivated my attention. Look, we're not treating these people well by following policies that people had or issue within 3ft distance from the patient, don't have much interaction with them and we're only providing fluid trying to prevent ourselves from doing invasive procedures for fear of getting infected. But this is what we ask ourselves. If the tavik suits that have been supplied are protected and indeed the viral cannot penetrate them and we see no reason why we can't touch this patient, see no reason why we can't get closer to them. If we took them out safely without getting ourselves contaminated, should be no reason why we should not touch this patient. So my first goal was to change the scope of treating patients, in short with oral fluids. You know what we learned in school of acid fluids, not oral. So they need to establish aviva.
- [22:00]
B
So is Part of the challenge then countering disinformation, yes, within the communities, but as well as within the healthcare professionals.
- [22:12]
D
We had to change the scenario from maintaining distance to establishing AFFI access. So we made it a policy that everyone entered in the unit, irrespective of your condition, we establish an IV access first. Because the time when, the time they took for a stable Ivola patient to transition from a stable condition, looking at you talking to a sudden state of shock, was there no time. And we never, we had. We have not been spending much time within the unit. The maximum was 44. If you stay there for 45 minutes and you stay longer, but I stay like one hour or more. Because you never have. If you can have like 20 patients in everybody outside. So by the time you come back in, within two or three hours later, patients you encounter initially condition have changed and it became more challenging to establish an RV access on a unstable patient compared to stimulation. So the goal was just establish it, don't worry, just establish when the patient become unstable, we give you it. So that's the first thing we started doing. The other challenge was we never had means of diagnostic capability. There's no laboratory, There was no laboratory within the unit at all. You could not collect samples from the unit, carry it to the hospital lab for testing. The only sample collected from the unit was for confirming Ebola positive or negative. That was the only thing we could do initially. And so we had to come up with means of determining whether somebody was going to acute renal failure by trying to measure their urine output. We never had things like fully cut it on a urine bag to implant and measure urine output. Those things was not possible. So we had to ask people to void urinating in larger mineral water bottles. If you want to urinate, do not use the restroom, urinate in this dish and come back want to see it. That was to determine the volume of urine being produced by the patients. And that enabled me to begin to say, ah, this has developed acute tylonecrosis. And based upon the color of the urine and the volume produced, we were just using our own thought and inventions on how to best attend to the patient. The other thing was there were guys providing, I mean real care for the patient, like nursing care. It was difficult to do so for someone who is considered to be polar positive. But if beside the disease condition itself, we realize later that the mental trauma of the disease alone will also happen to cure.
- [25:39]
B
You mentioned several of the international organizations, the multilaterals, who, cdc, a lot of our audience are the decision makers at Those organizations at the large NGOs, their priorities in various ways globally is localization. They want the funding, the power, the influence, the decision making to be made as locally as possible as they're developing and it's evolving policies under the general name of locally led or localization. What would your advice be to those policymakers, both at those donors, but also at those large NGOs and implementing partners and how they can most effectively make sure their resources are maximizing the impact of them and really, really helping organizations and the work that you and your team are doing.
- [26:36]
D
One thing I would say first of all, thank you for that question, is that I think our international partners first need to understand what the national health plan of the country is all about first and see what the government has in terms of the provision of quality health care for our people. So that we don't run parallel services. Rather, the services that we are coming to provide, meaning our international partner, conform with what the government agenda is. Because if they are parallel policies or play team will find it difficult to work as a team. And teamwork is very essential when it comes to improving, providing quality services. Now, having understood the government agenda and plan, then you can now decide on where to direct your funding. However, what has changed over the year is that some of the plans that are put together by our international partner, some do not conform with the government national agenda or plan not withstanding because they have the money, they enforce what their agenda of plans are and not what the country or the people are thinking about doing. So we saw that happen in some instances. So I think that is one thing to also try to figure out what do the people want.
- [28:41]
B
So making sure, even at the design, the project planning stage, the funding allocation stage, to have those voices of the clients, the people you'll be working with, engaged at that phase.
- [28:55]
D
Yes, or even visit them, visit it, look at their health sector, see where the pitfalls are, what are their strengths and then you can take advantage of that and come up with a plant. Say for example, in Liberia. There is no artifluid plant. In Liberia we don't have a single plant for producing afifluids anyway. Afifluids are brought in from other countries, but you came and choose to perhaps build a fabulous hospital. When afliffy with a stakeholder be bought from outside. The simple thing afliff is not available. If we had a pandemic now, wherein the patients will require massive resuscitation, you want to run into crisis.
- [29:58]
B
That's the next thing I wanted to ask you. How prepared do you feel both West Africa, but globally, the global health ecosystem is for another pandemic?
- [30:13]
D
I would say to some extent it's a yes and no thing. Yes, to some extent better prepared than pre Ebola.
- [30:21]
B
Okay.
- [30:21]
D
Globally we are prepared than pre Ebola and Covid. In fact, there are a lot of things we learned from Ebola that enable us to combat Covid. Okay? Yes. Simply in that many of the public health measures that we use during Ebola or that came about or emerged or developed during our fight against Igbo man were very useful when Covid came. For example, contact tracing is a very useful thing. Risk communication became very useful. Okay? Key search. And those things were things that we learned developing an organizational structure in terms of how to combat the outbreak. When all things developed during Ebola. So when Covid came it was easy to refer to them. And then the cost started and those structures or systems are still in place. So that's a plus. However, there is still not equitable access to health products and supplies and also there is still not equitable, I would say God finance globally. There are others that have more strength, there are others do not have.
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B
And would you say even within Liberia that it's not equal or are you talking globally?
- [31:55]
D
Globally, okay, okay. I give you an example. With all of the crisis we had in the sub region, Liberia is still struggling to ensure that our major reference lab become a level two. Whereas in guinea they do not have only level two lap, they have level three. Okay, but we're still there. R astute may not understand, but I think it also comes back to how resources were allocated, okay. How those resources made available were used or directed. The other thing I see when it with the other thing I've seen is that it was impressive when I attended the war fasting conference in Washington earlier this year to see how scientists are working, practicing efforts to come up with therapeutics, to come up with vaccines, to come up with different mechanisms of how to combat any emerging disease in the future. I think that's a good thing that globally we should continue to do. And so that's a good beginning. We need to continue that. However, I think another despite another advantage I've seen is that we never had what we call the African CDC parato Ebola, but that body along with other health related organization have emerged and are now doing everything possible to work with countries to develop preparedness agenda and or countries that already have preparedness agenda to improve on it and getting them ready for any epidemic in the future. That's a plus globally, okay? But what I don't see us do is that we're not trying to go after the sources of the pathogens. What do I mean? If you look at Ebola or maybe Covid, it's been said that many of these diseases have zoonotic origin but we're not doing anything to reach out to where those animals are to come up with research mechanism of how to see what's lying out there. Because many of these diseases are there now that they do not exist. But they end up quite condon paying attention to themselves until we provoke them. Except we provoke them. They don't bother us like now we find ourselves promoting. We may not be promoting it, but let me take that word back but we have global crisis. Like one vivid example is the one in Sudan or the one in Gaza with the situations in those countries there will be some pathogen flying by itself not bothering us but because of the absence of wind axis to sip drinking water their quest to find something to drink. Someone who just ingests something that no one had ingested before and that would be the beginning of another crisis.
- [35:44]
B
So even conflict, conflict can lead to the next global health crisis. Dr. Brown, you were named, you were on the COVID of Time magazine. You were named along with the other Ebola fighters, Time magazine's person of the year. And preparing for the interview I went through the list of past recipients of that. They include Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. Last year, Taylor Swift being named to that one is I'd love to hear the story just of how you become notified of that of an award. When we had some of the Nobel Peace Prize laureates on here, they shared how they got the call call but then more importantly get into what does that mean for your work? And has or how has that award and platform affected your ability to do work, fundraise, share your message globally.
- [36:44]
D
Thank you Mark. The issue of being placed on the COVID of Time magazine was a big surprise. I never had the slightest knowledge of ever being there because all we're doing was working. Don't work no waters to save life. That was my goal. The journalist from Time magazine who came or went at the unit to interview me took three days before she could finally get me to sit admire of determination. It's the first day she engaged me. I was like I'm basically, I have the chapel, I have patients to attend to. I have to come back to the hospital to do surgery. And then we went back into the unit said no time to sit. And I thought that would have discouraged her. But the first day she went away she was just taking pictures around the next day I encountered her I said okay don't worry we'll do it tomorrow. When the third day came I still wanted to avoid her but I said look I must leave this woman, don't worry and that's how we did the interview she never told me what purpose it was intended for or nothing she left. So it was in December early morning getting ready to go to work and trying to dress Then my phone ring and I looked there was a foreign call so I decided to ask took the phone and the person said congratulations, you've been name time president of the year what does that mean?
- [38:32]
B
Did you think it was a joke right away?
- [38:35]
D
Yeah I said I mean what do you mean? So I'm telling you only that one Time magazine cover who told you? He said no one has called you and I recognized her voice and I said John, is you visiting? I said no and then of course why there must be an answer so what this supposed to mean to me it is a remarkable achievement for the work you've been doing I said okay, thank you very much and I was done with all because I felt I was getting late to run to the unit to go and attend to patients and then my wife I just got out of the shower and overheard the discussion saying who was that? Someone called me to say I'm on time I was here some time pressing over here I don't know what she really mean but we figured out why it was we just thoroughly got dressed and off Then during the course of the day later in the afternoon a journalist called me from the national radio station I said Dr. Brown congratulations. I said about what? He said man I'm proud of you on time I was there just got it news on this on social media see then I decided I think I need to check and find out what these guys are talking about it was there I decided to go back Then later I got a call from Great Britain to officially confirm I said okay anything I supposed to do about that? No and then thereafter I've been trying to figure out but then I began to go back now to look at the history and find out who all have been time present the year before I'm like ah, now I see why people keep calling and saying this thing over and over Another thing I realized I think Liberia as a country many persons still like myself do not know where I mean it's time pressing so I think they don't really move any person except my former president Madame Sarif in Government. She was one person who called me, yes. Who called me to say, congratulations, thank you for what you've done for our country. Beside her in government, I don't see any other person calling. The president was very, very happy when the president called to say that they are saying to God, madam President, thank you. But this is not for me. It's for I and the team. Because whatever I did was not. Dr. No. With Daria's team. So what that did for me, I think popularity. And people got to know me here. DIANA I got called to different places to speak at different scientific conferences to talk about our work. I went to great reading, Canada, Ethiopia, here in the US to share our experiences and spoke at different forums. And then I think it's based upon this that the former president might have appointed me to serve as the chief executive officer for the teaching hospital in Nigeria because I had no political allegiance with him, not full memory of his party. So when he appointed me, having won to serve as the chief executive officer, that also came as a surprise until one day he told me about our engagement during the Ebola crisis. And that's when we became friends, meaning President George Biat, the former President Bi and that's how I got into government. But my goal was to continue in humanitarian services. However, having said that, there was another negative part of being recognized as a third person. One was initially, there were a lot of misconceptions. People were like, I've been given lump sum of money by time, several thousands of dollars. I did receive as big money town president of the year. And it was hard to explain to people that, look, it was just an ordinary recognition without any monetary value. Say, no, it's not possible. So even my team members that work with me at the unit also had such belief. So people were in bed saying things, and I was married. Why people don't want to believe me that this is just a mere recognition. There's no monetary value attached, and it's for all of us. Until it went as far as having armed robbers to break into my house, about eight of them, on ground that I received a lot of money from the time and I was making money available, but they threatened to rape my wife if I did not make the money available. Bentley would call us and say, give the money. If you respect the money more than your wife, we rip for him. And I was like, I have money collected. My computer, my wedding ring, and every cent we had took them away. I said, if you don't make the money available, we'll come back and I was like, I don't have money. I've got no money from being from a time person in here. So if you guys want to come back, you can come back. I remember then thereafter a few of my friends said ask for political asylum and leave this country because people may harm you because of this penalty. Am I running? The truth is I never have money. So I've told them the truth. If they want to come back, they come back. But I'm not running anywhere because I still felt I had more work to do in Nigeria. I still was committed to the provision of quality health care services in Nigeria and saw no reason why I should ask for asylum. I know my son, my first son was not happy about that because he was one of those who was saying leave this country, we don't want to lose him. We stay. So for our part of the world, these recognition get to be misinterpreted by others who don't understand what they actually mean. Okay, but that's the defeating point. I mean, but today we still, I mean I'm still happy that that was done because I'm using that to see how I can reach out to people and see how we can contribute to the improvement of healthcare delivery in our. I think this is the first time I'm talking about this aspect of the whole time present BDS scenario. I chose to just stay for the first opportunities.
- [47:12]
B
But so with that could you share what you're currently working on, where your energy's focused now and then maybe share a bit of the work that you'll be doing with Gorma's organization as well in Liberia?
- [47:28]
D
Yeah. Okay, thank you. Since I left the Drive Community Medical center in February this year as a result of Tinsho regime, I've been focusing my mind on humanitarian work and see how I can work with different healthcare provider to boost private sector health profession healthcare mainly in the private sector. So been thinking about how to work with other healthcare provider to ensure we brought their institution or services to a standard that is comparison to what we've seen in the west or seen to other places. Because at JFK when I was serving as the chief executive officer that was one of my major goals. But it was difficult to bring about the transformation of indcision because of a lot of bottleneck challenges. And so now I said maybe working with newly institutions would not be corrupted with different views and ideologies. One can strengthen them, work with them and see how we can develop them to provide quality health care services to people. And that's how I ran into Care Africa Medical foundation as well as the Absolute Healthcare Foundation. I'm working with the Absolute currently working with the Absolute Healthcare foundation to do cleft lip and palate repair in Nigeria. That's free of charge with support from SMART Training. So we across the country look for children with lip and added deformities into the repair and met government thinking about how we can give them a support. With my vast knowledge in healthcare, strengthening healthcare infrastructure development, healthcare policy and see how I can work with them so that we can ensure that people in that part of the country also appreciate qualitative health care. Because many of these services are offered in the urban setting of the country. Those in rural setting do not have good diagnostic opportunities. Okay. And the services there are still dismal. So there's a need to also support the private sector helping to provide quality healthcare services to the people in the rural part of the country. Okay. I don't know what I try to answer your question.
- [50:38]
B
No thank you. And then to wrap up we'd like to ask a so what question. So again if you're speaking to the international organizations, the regional organizations, the donors, what's the piece of advice or recommendation that you'd like to share with them as they both allocate their funding globally implement programs and as their goal is localization with again various meetings from organization to organization on specific what that means. But what's your advice for those organizations on how they can best support you and your team organizations like Gourma's to deliver impactful, sustainable results?
- [51:23]
D
Okay, thank you. I think one of the things I will first urge our international partners that are working with us to do is first maybe form a a strategic monitoring and evaluation team. Maybe that is void of government to serve as an independent watchdog to figure out how healthcare services have been delivered and among themselves to be able to determine where to that direct their resources and through that mechanism begin to look at work that are done by other partners one another and be like a watchdog for each other. Such that for example if an organization name the MSH is a user sponsor, it's an entity that sponsors some of the UC projects and GIZ is another group I think from somewhere in Europe.
- [52:36]
B
Germany.
- [52:37]
D
Yes, Germany. To see whether what Gaza is doing is actually right for the people terms in the states are not true.
- [52:48]
B
And do you think that role can be the government of Liberia or there should be also some third independence?
- [52:54]
D
I'm thinking about independent in or the NGO themselves because at time those in leadership because they've been they are receiving support from this organization are afraid to look into their faces and tell them the truth. Sure, I know what you're doing is wrong. I know when I was at jfk, I spoke friendly with one of them. And I don't care what you're bringing care for my people. It must be quality. Because what you see in the United States brings in the same standard. You can have standards in the U.S. but when you come to Liberia, then you want to lower the standard. It has to be the same. I think if we stood up to this organization and also being sincere from our end, also because if you stand up to someone to tell them about the truth about what they are doing, you too should also ensure that you're being fair and transparent in what you do. But because of our failure to be transparent from our end makes it difficult to criticize others when they are doing wrong. It is difficult because you're not transparent enough. You're not dealing fairly with the man. Already you sold yourself to him and because of that it's now difficult to criticize him for the wrong he's doing. But if we could just be frank and fair with these donor partners, telling them our agenda, let the partner know what we want and walk along with them for the benefit of the ordinary people, the vulnerable society, women, teenagers that are getting involved in illegal and legal abortion is now the issue of addiction, drug addiction not a major problem. This is a vulnerable population. But one thing I want to share with some of our partners is that I think investing in the private sector is also essential. Now it doesn't have to be all of the private facilities within the country. We put together a plan of project, come up with a benchmark of what we want and then evaluate a few facilities, say for example in Grand Basel, maybe two or three and work with them, telling them the standard we want and work with them over time. They are not going to give you donation or going to give you grant, except you fought to ensure that this institution got to this level. And this is the type of services you want for people to get and at the same time monitor them. If you don't do it, you probably have not support. Okay, but again, to do that we have to go and see, have to outline what we want and know what the people needs are and work with them. But I think as I said earlier, knowing the country agenda is also important as you come in with your plan so that it works in line with what the government has planned for our people. Persistent government people is not your people. They want to help I agree my children are my children. They come to help me. But I should know how you want to help my children. You have to ask me what place I have for my children. Then and only then we can work together to get them at home.
- [56:50]
B
Dr. Brown, we'll end with that. Thank you for taking the time to share your expertise and your insight today.
- [56:57]
D
Thank you Ma.
- [56:58]
B
I enjoyed our conversation very much and it was a privilege to have you on the eight Market podcast today.
- [57:03]
D
Thank you.
- [57:04]
B
All the best with your important work and we're always happy to share it however we can going forward. So thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me today.
- [57:12]
D
It's a pleasure. Thank you.
- [57:17]
A
Thank you for tuning in to the Aid Market podcast. If you enjoyed if you enjoyed today's show, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and connect with Mike Shanley on LinkedIn to stay updated on the latest USAID funding trends.