Project News

Signing the Minutes of Meeting

The initial meeting of the Project Steering Committee (PSC) ^[1] was held at a hotel in Damascus. After the greetings by the Director of the Health Care Directorate of the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Chief Representative of the JICA Syria Office, the Japanese expert team explained the project implementation plan based on its inception report. The team emphasized that in addition to achieving Outcome 1 (quality enhancement in reproductive health services at primary health care institutions) and Outcome 2 (promotion of behavior change in reproductive health) of Phase 1, a newly expected Outcome 3 (enhancement of local health administrative capacity) was added for Phase 2. The director of the Health Care Directorate of MOH expressed in his closing address, "we place great expectations on the third approach in Phase 2 to build up the management capacity of the Health Offices. Without this, there is no hope that the performance of the Health Centers will be upgraded." This meeting marked the actual beginning of the project.