“Women being able to reclaim the spaces and own their health choices to make the best decisions for their bodies is the future”

– Andrea Novella

By Napoleon Mugenzi

This was state by Andrea Novella of Global Digital Health Advisor VIYA project. This was during a side event on the first Women Deliver conference on the African continent. The events theme was “Taking a woman powered Approach to Healthcare Innovation”. Ms. Andrea Novella said it as a member of the panel of discussion.

Andrea Novella of Global Digital Health Advisor

“VIYA is all about creating this safe Space for women and girls to be able to access whether its information, services or products in one place. The heart of what we are doing is creating that space. To be able to build that space, what we do need is that solidarity and those partnerships because it’s a big space we need to create.” Said Andrea Novella.

The solutions we create are by, for and with women narrated Andrea Novella of Global Digital Health.

When we’re looking at innovation, there’s so many ways to view that. Innovation isn’t just technology, right? And I spoke a little bit at the panel about innovation and metrics and how we define health and so for us, it’s also really important to disrupt that narrative about talking to health in a sense of avoiding disease and really looking towards wellness and so for us, also part of our FP2030 commitments is innovating around metrics and so, reconceptualizing how we are measuring health to include wellness. Yeah, the format, the format is about financial, it’s about schools.” Said Andrea Novella.

She continued saying; there’s still a gender gap on digital connectivity. A lot of women don’t have access to internet or smartphones to be able to get the information that’s out there for all of us. And even if we do, we don’t necessarily feel that we have that capacity to make those decisions and so, maybe we’re influenced by social and societal norms.

We also have platforms but our platforms are locally led, e have one for Kenya, South Africa we don’t have one for Rwanda yet we have one for Latin America many more can be viewed on our website, she said.

This years Women Deliver Conference 2023 at BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda was held under the theme: ‘Spaces, Solidarity, and Solutions’

The conference attracted over 6,000 delegates from all over the world are in Kigali and was followed by over 200,000 followers online. The Women Deliver Conference 23 was the first of it’s kind in the African continent.