Date: 2017-11-03 07:51:52 ID: 1750
Organised by WAHO and its partners, the meeting to evaluate the operations and management of referral hospitals in ECOWAS aims at assessing the institutional technical and operational capacities of national public and private hospitals as well as the level of functionality of the network of existing hospitals and their impact on the performance of hospitals in the ECOWAS region.
The opening ceremony of the meeting was chaired by the Chief Director of the Ministry of Health with the participation of the permanent Representative of the President of the ECOWAS Commission, the Director General of WAHO, the Representative of the WHO Resident Representative.
After paying homage to WAHO for organising the meeting, which deals with an important aspect of the national systems of ECOWAS countries, the Representative of the WHO Resident Representative underscored the principal elements in the hospitals’ mission, namely “to provide quality healthcare, continuous training of healthcare providers, promotion of action research, and finally participation in public health activities such as the prevention and surveillance of epidemics”. For Dr Zampaligré Fatimata, this meeting was a good opportunity to undertake a diagnostic survey of the situation in the referral hospitals in the light of the challenges identified from the study of the current operational capacities of hospitals in the ECOWAS region, particularly their potential, their major shortcomings as well as their impact.
For the Director General of WAHO, improving the performance of the Health Systems in the ECOWAS region is part and parcel of the mission of the West Africa Health Organisation as an institution and this priority features prominently in the 2016-2020 Strategic Plan. This explains the special emphasis given to the improvement of the performance of hospital systems in ECOWAS member States through the Health Systems Governance programme.
This vision of WAHO, as described by Dr Xavier CRESPIN, is explained by the fact that: “In West Africa most of the tertiary health facilities are facing enormous structural and short-term challenges which hinder the accomplishment of their mission. These weaknesses translate into the treatment of patients from the localities rather than handling serious cases referred; and this leads to the underutilisation of skills and equipment. We have empirical knowledge about the fact that their technical potential sometimes cannot be used due to problems of maintenance, shortage of stock, inappropriate posting of human resources, obsolete infrastructure and equipment, poor management and organisational capacity, inadequacy of the referral and counter-referral system, etc.
Some serious cases cannot be treated and involve costly medical evacuation, which only the rich or persons with insurance cover can afford, leaving in abandonment the majority of people in the ECOWAS region”, declared the Director General of WAHO.
That is also the opinion of the Chief Director of the Ministry of Health of Burkina Faso, Mrs Francine Ouedraogo who recalled the requirements of the sustainable development goal No.3, exclusively dedicated to new issues such as health emergencies, non communicable diseases, trauma prevention and environmental health. These issues call for the in-country availability of efficient and resilient health systems, which direct all services without exception towards the achievement of universal health coverage. That is why Madame Ouedraogo, commends this initiative of WAHO on evaluating the operations and management of public and private referral hospitals.
The above-mentioned aspects will be the focus of in-depth discussions among participants from 15 ECOWAS countries, who will also:
Evaluate existing governance mechanisms in public hospitals in ECOWAS countries, by determining the strengths and weaknesses of the organisational models and alternative financing; Map out the national hospital systems (public and private), indicating the technical facilities, human resources, as well as infrastructure and equipment etc.; Analyse the operability of the RESHOC and other existing networks by determining their impact on the performance of hospitals in the ECOWAS region; Propose a plan for networking referral hospitals in ECOWAS, including a roadmap leading to the establishment or consolidation of the West Africa network of referral hospitals.
Moctar TRAORE, Po / Communication - OOAS
