Health facilities in the Western Highlands Province have been told under no uncertain terms to start implementing their planned programs as of April this year.
Chief Executive Officer of the Western Highlands Provincial Health Authority (WHPHA), Dr. James Kintwa said the planning and monitoring function of the WHPHA had not been performing to expectation due to lack of adequate manpower, resulting in many of the plans not being implemented and effectively monitored.
The Chief Executive Officer said this when officially opening the Western Highlands Provincial Health Authority’s 2013 Annual Performance Review Workshop at Hotel Kimininga in Mt Hagen recently.
The week-long workshop which started on 31st March and ended on 4th April was the first of two performance review workshops to be held this year. The other is to be held towards the end of the year.
The recent workshop was attended by more than 30 participants including members of the Executive Management Team, Program Managers, Sectional Heads, District Health Officers, facility OICs, Sisters-In-Charge, Church Health Secretaries, NGO partners and others involved in the management and delivery of health services in the province.
Outlining programs for this year, Dr. Kintwa said the priority area which the WHPHA Board of Governance had approved for implementation was the Healthy Lifestyle Project which included health-promoting school, healthy village, healthy lifestyle, health promotion and disease prevention.
He said these programs must be carried out as part of WHPHA’s health promotion activities to educate people and children to be change agents for health in the families and communities and for people to be responsible for their own health and live healthy lives.
Dr. Kintwa said another area was the water supply project to have water connected to all the rural health facilities, particularly for birthing facilities to allow mothers to deliver in health facilities and reduce the maternal, mortality and morbidity rates as reflected in WHPHA’s motto of “no mother or child should die during pregnancy, childbirth or the post partum period”.
He said medical equipment had also been procured and delivered to all rural health facilities to ensure necessary services were provided, adding that if any facilities had not received theirs, they should contact the Deputy Director Curative Health Services (Districts), Dr. Madison Dat to pick up theirs.
Routine immunization is another area which the CEO is concerned about and wants all facilities to organize themselves and carry out these programs on a regular basis as routine activities to produce the results instead of waiting for supplementary immunization activities.
He told his senior staff that the WHPHA has started the facility based budgeting and funding this year and managers had a big responsibility of managing their own funds at the district and facility level and must be accountable for how they spent the money.
Dr. Kintwa also told participants that the Government’s Free Primary Health Care Policy had been implemented in the province as of mid-March and all facilities including those run by churches should by now be providing free health care to all.
The funding that has been given by the Government would be dispersed to all the facilities including church-run facilities, he said.
On infrastructure development, the CEO said work on the new Kotna District Hospital would start in April with Tambul District Hospital starting in June and Togoba, Tinsley and Lumusa to be next to have their infrastructure built.
He said Kagamuga Health Centre would soon be built with funding from Australian Aid and work on the redevelopment of Mt Hagen Hospital should commence in October this year.
Dr. Kintwa concluded by encouraging staff to serve the people from their hearts as if clients coming to see them were their own parents, children or relatives.