The Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak continues to ravage communities in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. The World Bank in collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MOH) and other technical partners provided funding to implement a training program known as surveillance training to enhance Ebola response and readiness (STEER).
... See More + This STEER training aimed at strengthening prevention and control of the spread of the ongoing Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak by creating a large workforce of frontline health workers and community health workers known as relais communautaires (RECOs). The training strategy adopted involved conducting four STEER trainings targeting participants from provinces, health zones, health areas, and communities in North Kivu and Ituri provinces. This report summarizes the four levels of the STEER trainings conducted between third and fifteenth August 2019. The training focused on detection of EVD, contact tracing, infection prevention and control (IPC), and WASH, risk communication and psycho-social aspects of Ebola. Recommendations included: (1) training of health workers in EVD affected health zones that were left out in North Kivu, (2) conducting the STEER training in Ituri province, and (3) close supportive supervision and mentorship of the RECOs.
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Despite global efforts to address malnutrition, the numbers of children under five who are not growing properly are alarming: 150.8 million (22.2 percent) are stunted (too short for their age), 50.5 million (7.5 percent) are wasted (too thin for their height), and 38.3 million (5.6 percent) are overweight (too heavy for their height).
... See More + Children living in lower-middle income countries (LMIC) are particularly affected. At these rates, the world is off course to reach the World Health Assembly targets for 2025 and the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.
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Guinea-Bissau meets many, if not all, criteria that characterize health systems in fragile states. The country’s health system faces persistent challenges related to low public spending, poor infrastructure, inadequate supply of health workers, inadequate clinical and managerial training systems, malfunctioning referral system, non-operational health-information systems, weak governance and inadequate management capacity and systems (such as budgeting, public financial management and human resources management).
... See More + Public spending accounts for about 20 percent of total health spending and is mostly used to pay staff salaries, while donors finance nearly 90 percent of the recurrent costs of the sector, including medicines and other critical health inputs. This report provides a comprehensive diagnostic of the health service delivery system in Guinea-Bissau. It explores quality of care, workload/productivity and absenteeism. A service delivery indicators (SDI) survey was implemented to cover these and other key aspects of the health system for which no data were available in Guinea-Bissau (such as public expenditure tracking survey). The report provides an extensive analysis of the data and links it to other analytical and operational work under implementation in the country.
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This report summarizes key findings from the endline assessment of the pilot project, Improving Birth Registration Using Existing Community Structures and Immunization Processes.
... See More + The project was undertaken in Yilmana Densa and Goji Qolela woredas (districts); Hintalo Wajirat and Enderta woredas; and Amibara and Awash Fentale woredas, which are the intervention and control woredas in Amhara, Tigray, and Afar regions, respectively. The overall objective was to enhance a well-functioning civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system by integrating community health structures with civil status offices. This assessment was quasi-experimental by design and used longitudinal data, supplemented by a methodology like the one used in the baseline survey to compare improvements in key variables. The assessment compared intervention and control groups, with measuring use of civil registration services, and compared the outcome of the CRVS service provision in terms of improvement. The assessment used qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. Some of the key findings of the assessment include: After introduction of the project, the rate of births registered within 90 days increased from the previous year and was greater than in the control woredas; CSOs in the intervention areas regularly visited communities for awareness creation and motivation and for registration when the WDA invited them; qualitative data from KIIs and FGDs generally indicate that the large increase in birth registration in Afar was the result of the presence of CSOs at the kebele level, community mobilization, and no civil status office staff turnover during the project; the community consistently reviewed the registration progress monthly, identifying challenges faced and ways forward at the kebele level, and noted this in the minutes.
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This Public Expenditure Review (PER) is the first for Namibia’s health sector. Namibia is an upper-middle income country that has made major progress in improving the standard of living for its population and reducing poverty.
... See More + Still, with one of the highest Gini coefficients in the world, the society is highly unequal. In addition, the size of Namibia, combined with a low population density, makes it challenging for the health sector to provide universal access to quality health services across the country. The recent economic downturn has put fiscal pressure on the government and heightened the need for spending efficiency. Although government spending on health has been consistently close to the Abuja target of 15 percent, health outcomes are poor. The country faces a double burden of both communicable and non-communicable disease (NCDs), with high HIV/AIDS, stunting and maternal mortality rates that predominately affect the poor, and an increasing prevalence in non-communicable diseases that will contribute to costly treatments and growing health expenditures in the future. The Namibian government is committed to improve health outcomes. Namibia’s 5th National Development Plan (NDP5) for 2017-2022 aims to provide access to quality health care for its population, to increase Health Adjusted Life Expectancy (HALE) from currently 59 to 67.5 years, and to reduce mortality for mothers and children. To achieve this goal, the Ministry of Health and Social Services (MoHSS) has identified three strategic pillars for the health sector: (i) people’s wellbeing; (ii) operational excellence; and (iii) talent management. This health PER identifies several areas for the Namibian government to address in view of its goals.
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The objective of the Ebola Emergency Response Project is to contribute in the short term to the control of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak and the availability of selected essential health services, and mitigate the socio-economic impact of EVD in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
... See More + This proposed restructuring aims to address the reporting issues with the Results Framework because of the lack of a common understanding among the three countries; and hence has revised the Results Framework appropriately, no change in PDO but greater clarity of indicator statements. Specifically, some of the changes include clarifying the indicator formulation and definition, accordingly revising baseline and end-line values, introducing the new corporate results indicators, and including data sources for PDO-level indicators. The March 2021 end-line targets for most of the intermediate results indicators, as agreed to previously were maintained. The updated results framework with updated progress values is in section four. The current task team encountered significant difficulties in understanding the rationale and targets for some indicators and obtaining data to validate those which were reported during the Ebola outbreak period. Institutional memory on both the clients’ side (particularly in Sierra Leone and Liberia) and Bank side has been substantially lost; and more importantly the institutional arrangements that were established by the individual countries to lead the EVD response, were later disbanded, resulting in a loss of valuable information and data points. Though disbanded in Guinea, the focal person remained on the client side resulting in consistency of data availability. These are important lessons to be learned for the future.
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