Project News

Presentations on mentoring practices inspired national stakeholders to promote mentoring for performance improvement in health services. The meeting was held on 26th August 2014 in Dar es Salaam, organized by the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP) with the support from the Project. The purpose was to share concrete mentoring practices with national stakeholders. It was attended by representatives from NACP, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW), Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) Section, Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH), Mbeya Consultant Hospital (MRH), Bugando Medical Centre (BMC), Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC) and development and implementing partners such as USAID, ICAP and I-TECH.

Three mentors shared their mentoring experiences at the Dodoma Regional Hospital in March and May 2014 (Mentors contribute improvements in HIV and AIDS services at Dodoma Regional Hospital (March and May 2014)).

MRH presented their initiative of dispatching mentors to hospitals in four regions under its jurisdiction in collaboration with an implementing partner. Mentors at MRH were trained by NACP in May 2014. MRH has taken a quick and serious action since then. This initiative of MRH is a critical step forward in establishing a zonal system for technical support to regional and district hospitals through systematic needs-based mentoring. It could be a good model for other national and consultant hospitals (MNH, BMC and KCMC) to copy.

NACP presented findings from a study tour conducted in July 2014 (Tanzania learns from Zimbabwe on clinical mentoring (July 2014)). Differences between Tanzania and Zimbabwe in supervision and mentoring were summarized in the presentation. It was recommended that the mentoring approaches used in Zimbabwe shall be flexibly applied in Tanzania as well, depending on the situation and needs of service provision site.

The meeting provided a good opportunity to draw more attention from the national stakeholders including national and consultant hospitals to active application of mentoring for technical support to lower health facilities for performance improvement.

A pharmacist mentor presenting mentoring experience at Dodoma Regional Hospital