Date: 2017-09-20 17:36:27 ID: 1710
Bobo-Dioulasso, September 19, 2017 ' The West African Health Organization (WAHO) and the USAID/West Africa are holding the semi-annual review of the Leadership Capacity Strengthening (CAPS) project, at the WAHO's Headquarters in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso.
The two-day meeting will among other things review the activities conducted in the 2017 USAID Financial Year (FY 2017) and will look in particular at the achievements, challenges encountered during implementation, the Monitoring and Evaluation of the project's indicators and the budget. The meeting will also discuss the workplan and budget for the FY 2018.
In her introductory remarks, the Regional Director of USAID Regional Health Office, Dr Rachel Cintron, acknowledged WAHO as a valuable partner in pursuance of the Regional Health Office's mission which is: Leading and Catalyzing for Sustainable Health Impact.
She further stated that USAID/West Africa remained focused in its support to WAHO's institutional and leadership capacity, as this was in line with the CAPS project main objective which is: '??to strengthen the capacity of WAHO to be the lead health institution in the region for policy harmonization and advocacy, promoting public-private partnerships for health, and identifying, sharing, and supporting the scale-up of best practices in health in West Africa'??.
She congratulated WAHO for some key achievements made since the last project review which took place in March 2017. These include:
1. The organization in April 2017 of the first regional public-private partnership (PPP) forum in Health in West Africa that brought together officials from the Ministries of Health and key private sector companies to agree on a framework for public-private partnerships;
2. The adoption by the ECOWAS Assembly of Health Ministers (AHM) of the Regional PPP Strategic Framework during the 18th AHM in Abuja in June 2017;
3. Training of over 100 national and lower level data managers from the 15 ECOWAS countries to analyze and use the data from the regional platform, and the testing of the synchronization of DHIS2 national platforms of Ghana, Guiné-Bissau and Sierra Leone with the regional health information platform;
4. The adoption by the ECOWAS Assembly of Health Ministers (AHM) of the Resolution on Promoting Good Task Shifting/Delegation Practices in the Implementation of Family and Reproductive Health Programs of ECOWAS Member States in June 2017, after several years of hard work, and because of WAHO's strong collaboration with other partners, such WHO, UNFPA and the Ouagadougou Partnership. This resolution led to the nine member countries of the Ouagadougou Partnership pledging to scale up task shifting in order to strengthen community-based family planning services, as stated in the Declaration of the Ouagadougou Partnership Regional Commitments at The London Summit on Family Planning (July 11, 2017).
The RHO Director encouraged and acknowledged WAHO's continued efforts to advocate for and support ECOWAS member states to scale up and institutionalize task shifting, public-private partnerships and use of timely data for decision making.
She expressed the hope that all activities planned under the CAPS project, which ends in January 2019, will be successfully implemented and expected results achieved to pave the way '??for the next phase of regional health programming'??.
Rachel Cintron ended her remarks by announcing the transfer of a 2015 Toyota Prado from another USAID partner, Helen Keller International, as a gift to WAHO.
In response, Dr Xavier Crespin, the Director General of WAHO expressed his appreciation to USAID/West Africa for the collaboration, and for the financial and technical support WAHO has enjoyed since its inception.
He said through the CAPS project, especially through the institutional support provided by USAID/West Africa, WAHO has become more visible, which was evident during the 2nd ECOWAS Good Practices Forum in Health, held in Grand-Bassam, Côte d'Ivoire in October 2016. The Director General said another achievement worth mentioning was the successful organization of the first-ever regional public-private partnership (PPP) forum in Health in West Africa.
He however noted that WAHO needed to do more in the area of Key Population in HIV. He explained that since the last meeting held in Dakar where a declaration on Key Population was signed, WAHO has not been able to support countries, because of lack of expertise at the regional level. He therefore called on USAID/West Africa to support WAHO to undertake this activity.
Several working sessions have been planned and these include Monitoring and Evaluation, Health Information System, Best Practices, PPP and Finance.