Project News

The JICA Technical Cooperation Project for Strengthening Maternal and Child Nutrition Services in Mozambique (ProNUT) conducted a three-day training on maternal and child nutrition service quality assessment (SQA) in the project's target provinces, Gaza and Niassa.

ProNUT aims to strengthen maternal and child nutrition services through the use of the MCH handbook by health care workers and community health workers (known as APE in Mozambique) in health facilities and local communities. Before implementing capacity-building activities for them, it is crucial to understand the current status of the services through assessment.

Therefore, ProNUT developed an assessment tool tailored to the context of Mozambique, in close collaboration with the technical officers of the Ministry of Health and the provincial health offices, referring to similar assessments conducted in other African countries in the past. Helen Keller International, an organization with expertise in the field of nutrition in Africa, was also involved in developing the tool. The tool is downloadable to a tablet device. It is designed to account for the Internet conditions in rural areas of Mozambique to allow information to be temporarily stored even when there is no internet signal. The health officers from the targeted provinces and districts have been trained how to conduct SQA appropriately by using the tool at health facilities.

During the training, an SQA implementation plan was also developed for each of the pilot districts (Majne and Muembe districts in Niassa Province, and Chibuto and Bilene districts in Gaza Province). Now, the participants are ready and willing to perform. The SQA will be implemented as soon as other preparations are made.

Stay tuned for a report on the assessment!

Provincial and district health officers keen to learn the assessment tool on tablet computers (Niassa)

Training participants accompanied by the Project Chief Advisor practicing the SQA in a health facility (Niassa)

Training participants teaching each other the tool operations on a tablet (Gaza)

Practicing observation sessions of an actual provider-client interaction (Gaza)