The Quality of Care Network in partnership with the World Health Organization is exploring mechanisms for engaging the private sector in delivering maternal and newborn health services with quality. Beginning with scoping exercises in Bangladesh, Ghana and Nigeria, the exploratory project is documenting the lessons from private sector delivery of quality maternal and newborn health services. The project objectives are to:

1. Analyze the drivers and the current engagement of the private sector to deliver quality maternal and newborn health services in Bangladesh, Ghana and Nigeria;

2. Identify opportunities for involving the private sector in working within the national health system to deliver quality maternal and newborn health services in Bangladesh, Ghana and Nigeria; and

3. Propose models for effective engagement of the private sector within the national health system for implementing quality maternal and newborn health services in Bangladesh, Ghana, Nigeria and other Network countries.

The Ministry of Health, Ghana shared their findings in this first webinar, which will be followed over the coming months by webinars to share the findings from Nigeria and Bangladesh.

This is the fifth webinar in a series on ‘Engaging the private sector for quality maternal, newborn and child health care’, co-hosted by the Network for Improving Quality of Care for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and the World Health Organization.

The Integrated Maternal, Newborn & Paediatric quality of care assessment and improvement tool in hospitals allows use of a standard-based audit approach towards engaging hospitals in firstly assessing all key domains relevant to quality of health care for maternal, newborn & child health, secondly, in developing action plans for quality improvement at hospital and national levels which can be incorporated into the quality improvement cycle, so as to ensure replicability and comparability of results over time and across facilities.

The objectives of this webinar are:

• To share the lessons learned & best practices from field implementation of the quality of care assessment tool for maternal, newborn & paediatric care in 25 countries & 133 hospitals across 5 regions
• Encourage broad stakeholder discussions on quality of care assessment and improvement in hospitals for maternal, newborn & paediatric care, in the context of Universal Health Coverage
• Engage programme managers, partners, researchers and other players on quality of care for inputs & comments while the WHO team is finalizing the tool

Part 1: Presentations

• The Review of implementation features & observed gaps: Dr. Ornella Lincetto, WHO HQ/MCA
• Results of quality cycles and factors influencing change: Dr. Maurice Bucagu, WHO HQ/MCA
• Experience from Pakistan: Dr. Qudsia Uzma, WHO Pakistan
• Experience from Africa Region: Dr. Nancy Kidula, WHO AFRO Zimbabwe

Part 2: Questions and Answers

• Facilitation: Dr. Wilson Were, WHO HQ/MCA

This webinar was hosted by the WHO Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health, and Ageing and the Network for Improving Quality of Care for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.

Tuesday 15 June 2021 at 8am EDT, 2pm CEST and CAT

Improving health worker performance in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remains a major challenge. This webinar looked at the global level sharing the findings from a systematic review of the effectiveness of more than 100 strategies in LMICs to improve the performance of health workers (hospital- and clinic-based health workers, CHWs, pharmacists, and drug vendors) in both the public and private sector. The Health Care Provider Performance Review (HCPPR) considers the effectiveness of interventions to improve health worker performance in low- and middle-income countries and was presented by Dr Alex Rowe. The Ministry of Health Malawi also shared country experience and learning to support improvement of health worker performance. The Ministry shared their experience in capacity building for QI which has been undertaken in learning sites and also share assessment tools have been developed to assess health worker performance.

This webinar is co-hosted by the Quality of Care Subgroup of the Child Health Task Force and the Network for Improving Quality of Care for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.