Brazzaville, 6 November 2006 -- WHO technical officers with responsibility for health systems development and related programmes began a week-long meeting in Brazzaville on Monday to agree a common set of principles and approaches for strengthening WHO support to national health systems in the African Region.

The principle and approaches agreed at the meeting will drive the implementation of the third strategic orientation of “strengthening health polices and systems” contained in WHO’s orientation for its action the African Region during 2005-2009. The third strategic orientation aims at helping countries build functional health systems especially at the district and community level.

Opening the meeting, the Director of the programme management at the WHO Regional office for Africa, Dr Paul Samson Lusamba – Dikassa, underscored the need to support countries to strengthen capacity in each of the six critical components of national health systems.

These are policy formulation and strategic planning, financing; human resources for health, supply systems; service organization and management, and information system.

Dr Lusamba – Dikassa stated that in identifying the best approaches for providing integrated support and agreeing on a set of tools and training materials to be used by countries, it was important to avoid unnecessary duplication and fragmentation so as to ensure that technical support to countries was provided in a coordinated manner.

He noted that while funds were often directed to the achievement of disease- specific health outcomes, many interventions were delivered by the same , often limited, group of health workers and facilities.

Among issues being discussed by participants at the five-day meeting are:

• improving staff performance and health outcomes through integrated supervision
• Country experiences on opportunities for health systems strengthening
• what to invest in and how to do more with existing resources to scale up priority health interventions
• country experiences on aid harmonization and alignment with national health priorities, and
• exchange of evidence and experience from priority programmes on service delivery organization and management that help expand access and improve quality of health services

The meeting is being attended by 34 technical officers from 13 countries, WHO headquarters and Regional Advisers from the WHO Africa Regional Office.

For more information contact: 

Technical contact

Dr Saidou Pathé Barry 

Tel: + 47 241 39337 

E-mail: barrys [at] afro.who.int

Media Contact 

Mr. Samuel T. Ajibola

Tel: + 47 241 39378

Email : ajibolas [at] afro.who.int