DHS News - Newsletter of the District Health System

This is the first issue of the DHS News for 2012! Much has happened during the first 4 months of this year. To begin, the Minister of Health made the much-anticipated announcement of the names of the first 10 NHI pilot districts! The Minister has already commenced with road shows in these pilot districts to inform stakeholders of plans to strengthen the coverage and quality of care in these areas over the next 5 years. He also asked for inputs from stakeholders on their views of what needs to be done in addition to the planned activities. It is critical for district management teams to be fully involved with the creation of the plan.

Another exciting announcement has been that the consortium led by the HST, which won the tender 18 months ago to conduct the health facilities audit, has nearly completed the audit and has fed back their findings to many district management teams. Each facility, supported by the district management teams, are expected to develop and implement facility improvement plans on the basis of the data generated through this audit.

The last DHS News focused largely on the HIV, STI and TB Strategic Plan, 2012-2016. In this issue we focus largely on developments related to maternal and child health as well as provide an update on the progress we are making in PHC re-engineering.

Dr Yogan Pillay