On March 12-14, 2019, the Network for Improving Quality of Care for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (Quality of Care Network) will hold its 2nd meeting on Demonstrating accountability and learning from implementation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The meeting will bring together representatives from the ten countries that lead the Quality of Care Network and partners to share their progress, learn from their experiences in developing quality of care programmes, and inform the future directions of the Network.
When launching the Quality of Care Network in February 2017, the countries leading it - Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, India, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda, joined in 2018 by Sierra Leone - committed to halving the number of maternal and newborn deaths and stillbirths in participating health facilities by 2022 and to improve the experience of care. Under the leadership of their Ministries of Health, with the support of WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA and a broad coalition of partners, the Quality of Care Network supports the implementation of national strategies for quality of care in the health sector by using maternal, newborn and child health as a pathfinder.
Two years on, these countries are coming together this week, not only to take stock, but to discuss what implementing quality improvement takes – what systems need to be in place - the challenges in improving quality of care for women and children at national, district, and facility levels and what their ‘learning districts’ have taught them along the way. One main lesson is that sustained quality of care requires changes at all level of the health system, supported by five systems: on-site support for quality improvement in facilities, a learning system for solution seeking, a data system to report on patient outcomes and inform further quality of care programmes, a community engagement system, and a management system to deliver quality services.
Each country in the Quality of Care Network will share their leaning and data from the first phase of implementation. Participants will attend skill-building labs on topics including, among others, community engagement, advocacy for quality of care, or the links between emergency obstetric care and quality of cate. Innovation labs, led by organizations that are developing and implementing innovative solutions to improve the quality of maternal and newborn health, will give participants the opportunity to test these solutions’ relevance and feasibility in their context.
Representatives from the Ministries of Health of each country, UNICEF, WHO, UNFPA, bilateral development partners, non-governmental organisations, academia, as well as from health facilities will attend the meeting.
