“A good planning is the road to success” said Dr. Kalu, WHO Representative to Ethiopia on his opening remark in the first quarter meeting of WCO held from 9-10 February 2017 in Addis Ababa, in the presence of programs and regional coordinators and program managers.

The objective of the meeting was to look back at 2016 annual performance of WCO and look forth for the 2017 first quarter planning as well as to receive updates from the management.

Dr. Kalu, in his speech underscored that failure to implement activities is not a personal failure, but it is due to not stopping and looking back periodically and improving our culture in re-planning/re-adjusting our activities. “Stop once in a while to look at our work, determine where we are going and look at the challenges and see how we move forward”, he said.

He further stated that assessing the progresses made in 2016 at the beginning of the year will contribute in improving the implementation of the biennial plan which was signed in 2015 by the Minister of Health and the Regional Director. He added that this experience is a good exercise to detect changes in the environment and adjust the plans to better support the priorities of the Federal Ministry of Health.

During this meeting, cluster coordinators from HSS, CDS, MCHN, NCD, Partnership/GER/SDH/communication, HSE, and MSP as well as WCO regional coordinators from 8 regions namely Afar, Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Dire Dawa, Harar, Gambella, Oromia, Somali, SNNP and Tigray have presented a performance report for the year 2016, highlighted key challenges, suggested recommendations and gave an overview of their plans for the first quarter of 2017.

The presentations were then followed by rich discussions and, at the end, Dr Akpaka Kalu underlined that WCO Ethiopia is committed to support the Ministry of Health by giving due importance to planning and reviewing the overall activities undertaken.