By: Julia Heita
Health minister Kalumbi Shangula has called on health service providers, programme managers, policy-makers, health consumers, and partners in the public and private sectors to use and support the implementation of the Quality Policy and Strategy.
He said this is to ensure ongoing quality improvement of health care services.
Shangula said this during the launch of the National Quality Management Policy, the National Quality Management Strategic Plan, the Hospital Quality Standards and the Primary Health Care Facilities Quality Standards documents in Windhoek on Monday.
The documents have been developed to guide efforts by the ministry to achieve its vision of being the leading provider of quality health care and social services according to international set standards.
“The quality policy and standards development was largely informed by the various quality of healthcare systems assessment and the WHO handbook for National Quality Policy and Strategy (NQPS),” he said.
Shangula said the goal of the quality policy is to ensure that provision of quality health care services is a fundamental principle of the health care delivery system in Namibia. He added that it is also to improve health care quality in both the public and private sectors by using available resources efficiently.
“The efforts by the Ministry to improve the quality of health care services started as early as 1993, just after independence, and this has remained a top priority for the Ministry ever since,” he said.
Shangula said the government, through its various policies, has prioritised access to and provision of quality health care and social services to the countries population.
“Resilient health services require quality as a foundation, and the success and value of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) depend on its ability to provide safe, efficient, and good-quality services to all people, everywhere when required.”
During the launch of the documents, Shangula said the National Quality Management Policy provides a common framework for all public and private health care institutions, partners, and stakeholders to plan, mobilise resources, coordinate, implement, monitor, and evaluate the quality of health care services.
“During the development of this policy, consultations were held with key stakeholders from the Ministry, development partners, relevant institutions, health service consumers and the private sector to ensure that the policy development process was highly consultative, participatory, and transparent,” he explained.
Namibia’s World Health Organisation Representative, Dr Charles Sagoe-Moses, said improving health care quality is essential for strengthening health systems. Thus, defining national directions on quality is an increasing priority for many countries as they strive to systematically improve the performance of their health care systems.
“WHO (2020) estimates between 5.7 and 8.4 million deaths are attributed to poor quality care each year in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), which represents up to 15% of overall deaths in these countries,” he said.
