Annual Report 2010/11

Health Systems Trust (HST) will celebrate twenty years of supporting health service delivery in South and southern Africa in 2012. This is a long time in the life of any non-governmental organisation and we attribute this to HST’s enduring commitment to quality and never being content to deliver simply technically correct products and services that merely meet the minimum requirements of health systems strengthening policies and frameworks. Through our work we strive to inspire – not only our clients, but also ourselves. We strive to be associated with products and services that are inspirational and we realise how important it is to have our own internal systems operating like clockwork to enable us to execute our vision and mission.

During the 2010/11 financial year the organisation was ably guided by a full complement of 12 Trustees. We redefined our strategic focus to include the field of training and we acquired the human resource skills needed to deliver inspiring products and services. To support this, we continued to improve our operations and functions. HST has adopted and is implementing an ideal structure and size. We now strive to keep, more-or-less, to this structure and size and work with partners when a larger workload increases HST’s human resource needs. The change of structure results in HST’s four directorates being reduced to three — our two programme directorates (Health Systems Strengthening Research and Health Systems Strengthening Interventions) and our corporate services directorate (Human Resources, ICT, Administration and Finance). Our corporate services directorate’s proven and increasing efficiency enables it to manage and deliver on projects of its own, selling services and expertise to other organisations.

We continue to base our services and products on our mission of “health systems supporting Health for All in southern Africa”, conducting research and facilitating the implementation of interventions that promote good practice. Our projects continue contributing to improved quality, access to and use of health information. Our website, together with our flagship publications (South African Health Review and District Health Barometer) and the HST Bulletin, sent to over 1500 subscribers on a fortnightly basis, secures HST as a front runner in knowledge management in the public health domain. These products successfully package and distil key public health information for health workers, policy makers, journalists, researchers, donor organisations and consultants.
In February 2011, against strong competition, HST was awarded the National Health Facilities Audit project by the South African Department of Health. Within two weeks of winning the bid we mobilised 95 additional professionals who began their training in preparation for implementation of the project, thus emphasizing HST’s ability to deliver, while keeping our eye on the quality ball.

The details of our various projects are shared in this report and the achievements of HST’s staff over these past 12 months inspire me. I salute my colleagues for their commitment to collaboration and cooperation, both internally and external to our organisation. In this we recognise that the contributions of many lead to the one beautiful bouquet we all aspire to, namely, an improved public health system.

Jeanette R Hunter
Chief Executive Officer