Project News

In continuation from the Project phase1, RHM2 project is striving for the capacity strengthening of Regional Health Management Teams throughout Tanzania. The second phase emphasizes on enhancement of RHMT capacity in order to support Council Health Management Teams (CHMTs) and Regional Referral Hospitals. In cooperation with the counterparts from the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the project is offering training and orientation programmes as well as guidance through progress monitoring.

The training on "Comprehensive Council Health Plan (CCHP) Planning/Assessment/Reporting" for RHMTs was conducted as the first training in this phase in March 2012. CCHP is the annual plan covering health sector activities in each council, ranging from the management and operation of the health facilities to health promotion activities. In the planning stage, the issues and demands from the health facilities within the council are accumulated. Every year, the planners face the great challenge of combining various activities in accordance with 11 priority areas in effective manner with limited resource.

While the plan is developed and implemented by the Council Health Management Team (CHMTs) and health and social welfare facilities, RHMTs plays the important role of advising them so that the planning, implementation and quarterly reports are properly made, and assessing the plans and reports before they are submitted to the national level.

Main aim of the training was to disseminate the CCHP guideline which was revised in November 2011, and to improve the quality of CCHP planning and reporting through better RHMT's supports.

The training was facilitated by the District Health Service Coordinator from the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, together with the coordinator of financial resource for Local Government Authority from the Prime Ministers' Office (Regional Administration and Local Government)(PMO-RALG). After hearing the lecture on important parts of plan and report and common mistakes, the participants worked in groups on the assessment exercise using real RHMTs' plans and reports. After group exercise, each group presented the results and exchanged their findings and remarks.

The participants appreciated the training with various group exercises. With the know-how shared by the experienced facilitators and the colleagues from other regions, many participants realized that team-work can help in the improvement of their plans and reports. Some said that they wanted to these documents assessed by the team as soon as they went back totheir regions.

At the end of the training programme, action plans were developed by each RHMT to confirm how to apply what they learned in the training programme and how to support CHMT for their better performance. Various innovative approaches were proposed in the action plans such as cooperation within RHMT, promoting on-time submission of plans and reports etc.

The Project will continue monitoring the implementation of action plans and improvement status of the CCHP.

Assessment exercise by the RHMTs

Exercise with inter-regional teams