The
Gambia government through the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare Monday
hosted a two-day West Africa Health Organization (WAHO) dissemination workshop
of methodological tools for documenting good practices in health, at the
Paradise Suites Hotel.
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The objective of the workshop was to understand the overall process of ECOWAS forum best practices, provide operational definition for health best practice and evaluation of countries, and identify and document best practices in health programmer.
It was also held to write an abstract from a documented practice, save it on the WAHO website, commit oneself to exchanging experiences in best practices both at national and regional levels, and identify the next steps leading to the first ECOWAS forum on health best practices.
In his official opening remarks, the deputy Permanent Secretary (DPS) at the Ministry of Health, Dawda Ceesay, said the resolution establishing the ECOWAS forum on Health Best Practices was adopted at the 15th Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS Assembly of Health Ministers held on 11 and 12 April 2014 in Monrovia, Liberia.
He thanked the director general of WAHO, Dr Xavier Crespin, and his team, and partners for choosing The Gambia among nine countries selected to organize a synchronized national workshop each on the dissemination of methodological tools for Health Good Practices (HGP) documentation.
The national dissemination workshop, he went on, would accord them the opportunity to document several key practices identified by cluster groups, and finalized during the 1st ECOWAS Good Practices Forum in Health to be held from 29and 31 July 2015.
According to DPS Ceesay, the workshop should examine ways to accelerate the implementation of the great ideas at the end of the two-day workshop, as a means of strengthening the family planning, maternal and newborn health, and youth and adolescent sexual and reproductive health, national response with the sole aim of meeting MDG 4 and 5 targets and the post-2015 sustainable development goals.
He urged the participants to embrace the WAHO intervention in the systematic documentation, sharing of information and implementation of Good Health Practices, for the improved quality of life of the population and the accelerated socio-economic development of their people in the ECOWAS sub-region.
He thanked the Gambia government for providing the political environment at the level of ECOWAS for launching the initiative in The Gambia.
Best practice is considered by some as a business buzzword, used to describe the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that multiple organizations could use.
The workshop brought together senior officials from the ministries of health, regional health experts, researchers and managers of training and research institutions, major local, regional and international NGOs, managers of private companies involved in the health sector, as well as partners.
