CEBHA News Archive

Another CEBHA workshop for doctors and health personnel was arranged in Addis Ababa 28 – 30 April 2014. The evaluations were overwhelmingly positive and more than 90% of the participants found that the training fully met their needs, that the objectives were suitable, the teaching methods were relevant and effective, the trainers were experienced and enthusiastic and that the level of the training was suitable.

On 25 April 2014, the Third Annual CEBHA Symposium will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. To view the preliminary pogramme for the symposium, please click here.

Preceding the symposium CEBHA organizes a 3-day introductory workshop on evidence based healthcare in collaboration with local institutions.

The School of Medicine, University of Rwanda organizes a 3-day course in Evidence Based Medicine from 12th to 14th February, 2014. Thirty medical professionals will participate in the course. Facilitators are Prof. Joseph Ntaganira, Brenda Asiimwe-Kateera and Joseph Lune Ngenzi.

In 2013, CEBHA organized two workshops on Evidence Based Healthcare in Burundi and Tanzania, with support from the Elsevier Foundation through their Innovative Libraries program. The Elsevier Foundation contracted Africa Interactive to make a video about the Tanzania workshop in which participants and facilitators Richard Ssenono and Frode Forland tell us why Evidence Based Health Care is an effective tool to improve health care in Africa. In addition, an extensive article on CEBHA was published on Elsevier Connect.

Dr Fergus Macbeth

Interview with Dr Fergus Macbeth from Bristol, UK, previously Director of the Guidelines Department at the National Institute of Health and Care (NICE), Coordinating Editor of the Cochrane Lung Cancer review group, and oncologist.

Fergus has been engaged as a facilitator for the last three workshops on Evidence Based Healthcare arranged by the Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa (CEBHA), in Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania, a program sponsored by the Elsevier Foundation.

CEBHA Workshops on Evidence Based Healthcare held in Bujumbura, Burundi and Moshi, Tanzania

In 2011, the Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa (CEBHA) was awarded a three year Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries grant from the Elsevier Foundation. The awarded project focuses on the key role played by information specialists in the practice and implementation of Evidence Based Healthcare in the developing world. Through the project, medical doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers across eight African countries are taught the skills of searching and retrieving, evaluating and implementing medical literature and evidence into clinical and public health to improve patient care.

Two courses in the second phase of this project were arranged during the first two weeks of July. Librarians trained in evidence based literature searching in October 2012 were now co-facilitating on these workshops for health workers, policy makers and librarians.

During the first week of July 2013, the Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa (CEBHA) organized a 4-day introductory workshop on Evidence Based Healthcare for doctors and allied health professionals in Bujumbura, Burundi. The workshop was organized in collaboration with the National Institute of Public Health and the University of Burundi, Faculty of Medicine.

In July 2013, CEBHA organizes two 4-day introductory workshops on evidence based healthcare in Burundi and Tanzania in collaboration with local institutions. The objective of the workshops is to introduce doctors and allied health professionals to the main topics of evidence based healthcare: how to phrase searchable questions, appraisal of different study designs, systematic reviews, searching for evidence and implementation of evidence.

Strengthening evidence-based healthcare in Africa
Frode Forland, Anke C Rohwer, Paul Klatser, Kimberly Boer, Harriet Mayanja-Kizza
Evid Based Med Published Online First: 16 February 2013 
doi:10.1136/eb-2012-101143 ; PMID 23416418

During the first week of October 2012, the Royal Tropical Institute and the Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa (CEBHA), together with the University of Addis Ababa and with support from the Elsevier Foundation, organized a 5-day Training of Trainers workshop for librarians. The workshop report is now available for download.

This workshop was arranged by the Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa (CEBHA) as part of the Annual CEBHA week in December 2012. The workshop was hosted by the National University of Rwanda at the School of Public Health, National University of Rwanda, Kigali.


Last month, at the Second Annual CEBHA Meeting in Rwanda, doctors from nine African countries, alongside European colleagues, signed the Kigali declaration, which urges governments, non-governmental organisations, and healthcare professionals to implement evidence based healthcare.

The Second Annual Meeting and Symposium about ‘Evidence in Africa’ was arranged by the ‘Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa’ (CEBHA) in Kigali, Rwanda on 11th and 12th December, 2012. The meeting was hosted by the National University of Rwanda and the Ministry of Health, Rwanda, and was funded by the Royal Tropical Institute. There were representatives from eight countries and an impressive turnout of 100 people at the Symposium, mostly doctors, but also nurses, policy makers, representatives from NGOs and high level government officials.

Masimba Clyde MuziringaMasimba Clyde Muziringa works as a librarian at the College of Health Sciences Library of the University of Zimbabwe. He gained experience with Evidence Based Healthcare (EBHC) previously this year, when he co-facilitated a training session on Evidence Based Healthcare for CEBHA in Zimbabwe, together with dr. Kimberly Boer: "This training session, which was followed by other training sessions which I did at the University of Zimbabwe, College of Health Sciences, managed to strengthen and sharpen my knowledge, skills and appreciation of EBHC. To date, I have co-facilitated more than 10 sessions of EBHC literature searching, targeting mainly clinicians and physicians who are working as Registrars at various hospitals in Harare, Zimbabwe", says Muziringa.

For the first time in history 24 medical librarians and health information specialists from 7 African countries (Ethiopia, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa) gathered in Addis Ababa to learn, think, share and act regarding evidence based health information. During the first week of October, the Royal Tropical Institute and the Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa (CEBHA), together with the University of Addis Ababa arranged a 5 days ‘Training of the Trainers’ workshop in Addis Ababa.

The workshop was about how to find the best available evidence for priority health issues in Africa and about how to assist and train health workers and researchers in efficiently searching and retrieving evidence based information.

From 1 to 5 October 2012, the Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa (CEBHA) organizes a Training of Trainers course in Evidence Based Literature Searching for librarians. The course will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a three year Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries grant from the Elsevier Foundation.

The first Annual Symposium of the Collaboration for Evidence Based Healthcare in Africa (CEBHA) was arranged by the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and Makerere University and held on the 24th of November in Kampala Uganda with 80 participants from 8 African countries.