2015 NATIONAL HEALTH CONFERENCE TO MAP OUT FIVE-YEAR PLAN

This year’s National Health Conference is special as it maps out the country’s health directions for the next five years, says the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Medical Services, Dr Tenneth Dalipanda.

Dr. Dalipanda told SIBC News in an interview this year’s health conference is also important as it helps the ministry to reflect on its performance as well as plan for the future.

“So it it a very important forum for the ministry because this is when we look at how we perform over the year and then how to plan for the future because one of our health strategic plan which is usually a five year plan ends at the end of this year, so that makes this year’s health conference a bit more important because we are discussing also the National Health Strategic Plan for the next five years 2016-2020. So we are not looking at an annual performance of the ministry; we are looking at the last five-year performance of the ministry of health.”

Meanwhile, the Permanent Secretary says there are key result areas expected out of the National Health Conference, one of which is improving the coverage of health services in the country.

“The key result areas are addressing improving coverage of our health delivery. There’s no new stuff, we want to improve what we are doing in the past. The other one is improving the quality of service that we do, so the quality needs to be improved. The other one like building for the future that will be a new one, the SDGs one and another key result area is developing or improving our partnership so the partnership is with NGOs, with development partners and amongst ourselves and government ministries.”

SIBC News understands the 2015 National Health Conference ends this Friday.