UMUC's Raymond Terry is working to help solve Africa's health problems.

UMUC Professor Offers Expertise in Africa

By Alita Byrd
Special to FYI Online

Raymond Terry's agenda for December 2001 and January 2002 didn't only include the usual holiday planning and preparation for a new semester that occupies many university employees. Instead, Terry's agenda included two trips to Africa, where he used his skills as a health professional to work on solving some of the continent's most pressing health problems.

Terry is a health systems analyst and management specialist for Health Services Management at UMUC, but his expertise has been recognized by the UN and other international organizations, which have recruited him to lend his experience as they work toward solving Africa's vast and far-reaching health problems.

Terry was called to be a primary delegate at the African Development Forum's December conference, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which addressed the challenge of AIDS in African leadership. Before the conference officially began, Terry worked with other primary delegates developing position papers on the responsibilities of African leaders in fighting the AIDS epidemic across Africa. While AIDS was the primary focus of the initiatives, they also addressed other capacity-building issues in conjunction with the disease, such as women's rights, housing and roads development, and political governance.

Terry was not the only representative from UMUC to help plan the conference. Virginie Mongonou, a recent graduate of the UMUC health services management program, completed a summer internship as an assistant planning the conference. She currently works with the Global Coalition for Africa at the World Bank, while simultaneously pursuing graduate studies at UMUC.

The Addis Ababa conference yielded an action plan to guide efforts by African leaders in their fight against the spread of AIDS—and the acronym was redefiined as Africa Is Destined to Survive.

Hardly had Terry caught his breath from his efforts in December than he was called as a program delegation leader to South Africa for a National Youth Leadership Forum in mid-January. He accompanied 62 medical and other health program students from universities across the United States on a pre-professional experiential learning mission to cities throughout South Africa. The students saw the South African health service firsthand in what turned out to be an intensely interactive experience.

"This was a trip of a lifetime and many of the participants have since told me it changed their lives forever," Terry said.

A particular emphasis of the trip was to analyze the delivery of health services to a vulnerable target population comprising the poor, the uninsured, and the indigenous peoples in South Africa.

The students visited medical schools, traditional healers in the bush country, hospitals, AIDS and tuberculosis facilities, and hospices in provinces throughout the country. They learned details about what they were seeing in early morning briefing sessions and then participated in lively debriefing sessions every evening that Terry helped to facilitate.

Despite the hectic schedule, the group still found time to visit some of the country's important cultural and historic sites, including Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, Table Mountain, the Apartheid Museum, and a game reserve.

The trip was a resounding success, according to Terry, and clearly highlighted the importance of exposing future health leaders to international concerns.

"Engaging in these planning and educational experiences . . . reinforces my belief as a health systems analyst and management specialist that Africa is destined to survive," Terry said.