Cameroon link Participates In Health Partnership Strategy Workshop

By Camlink News, Email: camlink99@gmail.com The Cameroon Cooperation Division of the ministry of public health organized a three-day workshop on partnership strategy and contract initiation in Douala from the 19th – 21st July 2012 for leaders of health development organizations and health district service heads in the littoral region.

Closing the workshop on July 21, the regional delegate for public health in the littoral, Dr. Yamba Beyas Martin, expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the exchanges between the public and private health sector representatives and the excellent delivery of content by the team from the cooperation division led by Maina Djoulde Emmanuel.

Other facilitators included Mrs. Abena Yolande, Dr. Bahanag Bassong, Mrs. Wonje Martine, Mrs. Mbango Anne and Ngah Emanuel , all top level officials of the ministry of public health in Yaoundé. Cameroon Link was amongst the ten health sector civil society organizations including the association for assistance and well being, mother and child association, association for women’s development and the association for the vulgarization of health information. The chief of the cooperation division at the ministry of public health told the participants that health sector partnership has a very long history before Dr. Bahanag Bassong presented the different judicial tools and structures for partnership realization. The Cooperation division chief discussed the changes made in the new health sector partnership document as he explained the judicial norms for establishing a partnership contract document. Each participant received the new Cameroon health sector partnership strategy document, which covers the period 2007 – 2015. The health sector strategy, reviewed and adopted tunes with the growth and employment strategy in Caùmeroon, which is the general reference frame work of health policies and programmes since 2001. The new document sets major guidelines and priority strategic directions of action as far as health delivery is concerned with the support of national and international partners.

In effect, all forces have been federated to fight against poverty through the health sector strategy and this gives the opportunity for contracting interventions with the following objectives: • To promote and render operational the complementarities between all health stakeholders at the national public, private and community levels, and the international development partners who support Cameroon’s health sector action. • To reinforce the decentralization of the national health system in order to ensure result-based management at the peripheral level. The review of the new health sector partnership strategy was participatory and lays the frame work of collaboration between all health stakeholders. It is strongly held that this constitutes a basic instrument capable of contributing to promote collaboration between the public, private and traditional sub-sectors in order to ensure quality health care. According to the Minister of Public health, André Mama Fouda, this marks the adherence of all health stakeholders to a single collaboration frame work. International partners including the European Union, French Technical Cooperation, GIZ, UNICEF and WHO contributed in designing the Cameroon Health Sector Strategy for promoting partnerships. This frame work is a result of consensus between all stakeholders because the development of the partnership strategy involved the participation of the ministry in charge of public health, related ministries, private organizations, denominational bodies, professional associations, NGOs, bodies representing bilateral or multi-lateral co-operation institutions as well as the population. The partnership strategy is drawn with inspiration from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with the hope that it would make it possible to improve health care quality and preserve the principles of equity and ethics in health care provision. The partnership strategy axes include putting in place a legal and institutional framework and technical support, implementation of a contractual approach among stakeholders of the public and private sub sectors, setting up of new relations framework among stakeholders of the public sector, supporting and monitoring of implementation of the partnership. Collaboration documents shared for effecting health sector partnership included the collaboration agreement letter, frame work convention; performance contract, obligations and resources frame work, miscellaneous and final provisions.

The 40 participants were drawn from the regional delegation for public health in the littoral, the Health District Services, municipal councils and health associations. On the third day of the workshop participants constituted three work groups to share experiences and evaluate the pertinence of the new health sector strategy. The work group session led to participants conceiving sample frame work documents as described in the Cameroon health sector partnership strategy (2007 – 2015). The first health sector strategy covered the period from 2001 – 2010.This did not produce the impact expected and it has been reviewed putting into consideration the weaknesses of the first health partnership strategy document. The health strategy workshop gave the opportunity for sharing past and current positive experiences of Cameroon Link and Community of Learning partnership during the radio story design initiative pilot phase just ended in Lebialem. Cameroon Link aims at bringing on board the ministry of public health through the department for health promotion to support the scaling up phase at national level. Sharing of COL Cameroon Link partnership impact continues as it was made known that activities related to the promotion of mother and child health care would be introduced into the Cameroon budget from the year 2013. Cameroon Link strongly holds the opinion that babies don't wait and the collaboration arrangements should avoid any partnerships with conflict of interest.