Abuja, 22 June 2015 - The World Health Organization (WHO) in Nigeria has successfully concluded two separate workshops in Abuja from 15-20 June, 2015. The workshops addressed different themes aimed at building capacity towards supporting the country in its drive to provide the required human resources for the attainment of the highest level of health by all Nigerians; and to document best practices that are contributing towards the goal of achieving interruption of polio transmission in Nigeria.

The first workshop, organized in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health on  “Workload Indicators of Staffing Needs (WISN), a human resources management and planning tool” was supported through a WHO project on “Enhancing the ability of frontline health workers to improve health in Nigeria”, funded by DFATD-Canada,

Addressing the audience at the WISN workshop, the WHO Country Representative (WR) in Nigeria, Dr Rui Gama Vaz emphasized on the need to maximize the opportunity of the workshop to enhance knowledge of the tool to “give health managers at all levels, a straightforward, systematic way to make staffing decisions, and manage human resources efficiently and effectively”.

The facilitators were experts from WHO Headquarters in Geneva, AFRO and the WHO Country Office in Nigeria who trained participants from the FMOH, Bauchi and Cross River states, as well as regulatory bodies, professional associations and representatives from frontline health workers.

The second workshop supported by WHO Regional Office for Africa, was on documentation of best practices of the polio eradication programme, focusing on WHO field activities in strengthening the immunization programme.

Speaking to WHO personnel at the workshop which included state, zonal and central levels staff who played a critical role in initiating the innovations or were involved with the implementation of the innovations, the WR regretted that the country office was not doing enough in documenting the enormous work and resources deployed to achieve results as lessons for future public health programmes.

“We do a lot but we do not publish enough to share our best practices of the strategies and innovations that we have being implementing to produce results that could be replicated by others” Dr Vaz stated. It is expected that the products of the workshop on documentation of best practices will be published in reputable peer journals.

As part of continued capacity building of WHO staff on the organization’s core functions, the Nigeria Country Office will hold another 5-day workshop on research methods and scientific writing from 22-27 June 2015 in Abuja to enhance skills of WHO staff on research issues.

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For more information, please contact:

Technical contacts:

Dr Pascal Mkanda; Tel: +234 803 402 2140; Email: mkandap [at] who.int
Dr Eileen Petit-Mshana;; Tel: +234 807 759 0066 ; Email: petitmshanae [at] who.int
Media contact:

Ms Charity Warigon; Tel: +234 810 221 0093; Email: warigonc [at] who.int
Below:

01. The WR delivering his opening speech at the WISN workshop

02. WR in a group photograph with the facilitator and participants at the polio best practices workshop