23rd June, 2021(Mombasa, Kenya): The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) this morning inaugurated 2nd Expert technical working group and Steering Committee Meeting on IGAD Regional Action Through Data (RAD) in Mombasa Kenya from 23rd to 26th June, 2021. During the opening ceremony presided over by IGAD RAD leadership named Dr. Ahmed Bashir was made by the welcoming remarks followed by official opening of Onesmus Kamau, Head of Health information and digital health of Ministry of Health, Kenya.
Participants are drawn from IGAD Secretariat Health team, members from IGAD Member States Health Ministries as well as RAD Consortium (Duke university, Broadreach healthcare and Jembi Heath Systems) and other organization.
This four-day meeting comprising two-days for technical meeting followed by two-day steering committee meeting is an opportunity for IGAD member countries to deliberate and review final draft of the Regional Data Sharing and protection policy. This policy aims to mitigate challenges that emerge from a lack of consistent and aligned data privacy and sharing policies among the IGAD Member States.
During the discussion experts and steering committee members recommended that IGAD should come up with clear strategies to fast track the implementation of IGAD Regional Health Data Sharing and Protection Policy. The forum also noted that IGAD should provide special consideration in terms of capacity building for the member states with inadequate data protection and sharing system.
At the end of the meeting, experts and steering committees endorsed IGAD regional data sharing and protection policy, IGAD regional data sharing and protection policy implementation guide and IGAD regional data sharing and protection policy metrics. Implementation of the endorsed documents will be guided list of recommendations and declaration made by experts and steering committee from member states.
