New one-year diploma programHealth care managers get more training [Archives:2004/730/Local News]

By Stephan Pahls
For The Yemen Times
Improving health care management across Yemen is the goal of a recently-launched one-year program that is now training 21 participants.
Under the auspices of Minister of Public Health and Population Prof. Mohamed Yahya Al Noemi, and the representative of the European Commission Delegation Sana'a, Jean-Bernard de Milito, the “Diploma Course in Health Service Management” was inaugurated recently at the National Health Management Training Centre in Sana'a.
The course upgrades the skills of middle-level health staff, whose task is to manage Yemen's public health services in the decentralized District Health System.
The first class of 21 trainees enrolled in the course comes from five governorates and eight districts, but Yemen's Ministry of Public Health and Population has indicated that health staff from every district in the country should take the course
Most members of Yemen's district health management teams, which are in charge of planning and managing health services in the country's 332 districts, are medical assistants, nurses and technicians who have over the years moved into management positions without formal management training.
Since the launch of the national Health Sector Reform in 1998, the Ministry of Public Health and Population, with the support from various multilateral and unilateral development partners, has made an effort to improve training for health managers.
The “Diploma Course in Health Service Management” received special support from the European Commission. A one-year course of 10 modules, it covers topics like planning, human resource management, health information systems, and quality management.
Each module contains one week of theory, taught at one of three national health training institutes in Aden and Sana'a, as well as a three-week supervised field assignment.
The course uses modern training methodologies. It was developed almost completely by national training and public health experts.
Since the course is modular, several classes can be taught simultaneously. But in order to bring it to a larger number of health managers, training institutes are currently developing a series of short-courses based on its full curriculum, which will be taught at the governorate level.
The diploma course is an example of successful cooperation between the health ministry, national health training institutes, independent national public health experts and donors.
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