Southern Africa Regional Hub

The Southern Africa Regional Hub was established to address a gap in the coordination of responses to the challenges of advocacy, policy, implementation, research, and surveillance of noncommunicable diseases and injuries in the region. Southern Africa is a priority region to improve care for severe NCDs due to its high proportion of people living below the poverty line.

Rwanda, Malawi, Liberia, and Haiti implemented PEN-Plus before the Network's launch and are expanding the program nationally. Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe opened PEN-Plus clinics and training sites at rural hospitals in 2023 and are developing operational plans for national scale-up. The Democratic Republic of Congo has completed its situation analysis and plans for priority setting.

The Southern Africa Regional Hub is based at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, which also hosts the Mozambique Co-Secretariat of the Network.

Objectives of the Regional Hub

  1. Establish regional approaches for advocacy, research, and implementation that will lead to regional scale-up models for integrated delivery of priority interventions.

  2. Strengthen the ongoing efforts of national commissions to implement the Lancet Commission's recommendations and advance the Network's strategic initiatives.

  3. Support initiation and national scale-up of PEN-Plus clinics and training sites in Southern Africa.