Across Africa, health care providers participate in ECHO virtual networks to improve their practice and health care delivery in their communities. Watch the six-minute video below to learn how.
Dr. Victoria Manzi, medical mentor at Chawama Level 1 Hospital (Lusaka, Zambia), was working with a young girl who had symptoms that were difficult to diagnose. By joining an ECHO virtual learning session and discussing the young girl’s case with a community of peers and experts, Dr. Manzi deduced that the young girl was showing symptoms of tuberculosis. Shared learning helped Dr. Manzi close a knowledge gap and provide a young patient with evidence-based care. Dr. Manzi’s story of solving a health care challenge mirrors the experiences of ECHO-trained providers across the continent. Ministries of health, having noticed the impact of virtual networks on community health outcomes, are now responding to national health care challenges through ECHO.
Professor Lloyd Mulenga is the director of infectious diseases at Zambia’s Ministry of Health. Over the course of eight years, he has seen Zambia’s partnership with ECHO grow from implementing a topic-specific training program to designing a national capacity building strategy. Zambia’s Ministry of Health uses the ECHO Model to improve cross-agency communications, coordinate national health care strategies and interventions, and train a growing workforce. Even as the global health community experiences ongoing change, Professor Mulenga views ECHO as a buffer to uncertainty: “Project ECHO is a platform that was built for moments such as this, when we have a reduction in financing of various health care systems.”
Zambia’s Ministry of Health is scaling how it solves health care challenges through digital collaborations. Similarly, ECHO partners in Kenya are using virtual networks to implement life-saving best practices across health care institutions.
Scaling Interventions Across Geographies
The over-prescribing of antibiotics leads to harmful health outcomes for millions of people around the world; it is a process called antimicrobial resistance, when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites no longer respond to antibiotic treatment. ECHO partners at Kenya’s National Public Health Laboratories developed an international learning network to improve how health care providers and institutions manage the use of antibiotics. The Telementoring, Equity and Advocacy Collaboration for Health Through Antimicrobial Stewardship (TEACH AMS) program launched in 2023, in collaboration with Pfizer, and since then, participants have joined from 58 countries, and seven African countries have replicated the TEACH AMS program. Scaling how knowledge is shared across geographies is a best practice that ECHO partners have adapted to context-specific needs.
From left to right: Dr. Victoria Manzi, Professor Lloyd Mulenga, and Professor William Yavo. Image Credit: Burness Communications, May 2025.
Cote d’Ivoire rapidly scaled health care provider training during the COVID-19 pandemic. The learning networks they developed during pandemic evolved into mentorship programs covering a wide range of health care topics. Professor William Yavo, director general of the National Public Health Institute, noted that when the COVID-19 pandemic reached Cote d’Ivoire, ECHO trained 10,000 providers across the country in one month – an “extraordinary and unique moment demonstrating the power of networks against a major public health threat like COVID-19.”
In the face of ongoing health care challenges and evolving uncertainties, ECHO partners continue to collaborate and innovate to solve local, national, and regional gaps in care, training, and education. As a result, more and more people seeking treatment are able to find the life-saving care that they need.
Dr. Victoria Manzi, applying the skills she gained through ECHO, cured the young girl living with tuberculosis. The girl’s mother shares the sense of hope her family gained after treatment: “It helps a mother to have hope that their child can be returned back to their good health and actually attain their dreams later on.” ECHO’s impact goes beyond improving health practices and systems to touching the lives of families and communities.
For more information, email Project ECHO or read more stories about Project ECHO in Africa.
Featured Image: Doctor and patient at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, Kenya. Photo Credit: Kabir Dhanji, Burness Communications, May 2025
