As one way of improving quality health care system in the Country and also as a step towards international recognition, the Ministry of Health has developed National Quality of care Standards.
The standards will be used for rating health facilities from 1 star to 5 stars. The higher stars the higher the quality of care.
This was disclosed yesterday by the Minister of Health Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda during the launch of the three-day 2nd National Quality of Health Care Conference in Lilongwe.
According to Chiponda, the standards will apply to all levels of care, whether private, non for -profit or public health facilities.
“Facilities at the same level will be compared to each other to bring about some health competition.
Implementation of the standards will start with central hospitals, district hospitals and selected
health centres, CHAM and private Health facilities until we scale up nationally.
“These standards will help my Ministry to identify centers of excellence for benchmarking and health facilities that require support to improve. The information on quality rating empowers the users to choose where they want to access services, or in cases where alternatives are not there, the users will work with their health facility to ensure that it is offering quality services,” said Chiponda.
She then urged the Ministry of Health Departments, Directors of Central Hospitals, Directors of health social services and development partners to use these standards as a benchmark for improving quality services in health care facilities.
During the launch, the Minister also disclosed that the Ministry of Health has achieved targets in improving expectancy from 57.6 to 65.9 years reducing the crude death rate from 10.8 to 6.3, infant mortality rate from 42 to 33 deaths per 1000 live births and under five mortality rate from 63 to 45 deaths per 1000 live births.
Chiponda also hinted that improving the quality of health care is critical in building a resilient heath care system.
In her remarks, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Officer-in-charge Miranda Tabifor called on government to allocate more resources to improve health sector outcomes and ensure that they are commensurate to the needs of the health sector.
She also pointed out the need for equitable allocation of resources to districts so that all challenges and needs in the health sector are dealt with.
The theme for the conference is “key to Investing in Quality Health Care; A Roadmap to Achieving Universal Health Coverage and Sustainable Development
Goal 3”.
The conference’s main objective is to learn from the achievements and failures experienced during the implementation of the quality management policy and the HSSPII.
Quality was the key pillar in the HSSPII, and it continues to be one in the HSSPIII in line with the goal of Malawi 2063 to attain universal health coverage of quality health care services for all Malawians.
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