Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MHMS) is delighted to be part of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Pacific Sub Regional Office (PSRO) training on Results Based Management (RBM) at the UN Joint Presence Office, main conference room along with other line ministries and non-government organizations.
The training aims to strengthen program management capacities of partners, national and sub-national SRH coordinators to effectively manage and coordinate integrated services, collect, report, analyze, and use data to track progress against baseline and towards targets set.
Mrs. Alicia Kenilorea, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Solomon Islands Representative explained that Results Based Management is an important concept and development practice that is of critical importance in our work as partners and stakeholders of development.
“The opportunity for Solomon Islands to embark on this training has never come at any right time than now. I would like to commend all of you, our partners and especially the government of Solomon Islands for prioritizing this capacity building initiative. As most of us would agree, it is more needed now than before to ensure continuity building of high quality and effective programme delivery for RESULTS, especially in this context of COVID-19, where innovative in planning, monitoring and evaluation, will be necessary to realize development results under the sustainable monitoring development goals, and our ICPD mandate”, stated Mrs. Kenilorea.
She added following an independent evaluability assessment of UNFPS’s Pacific Sub Regional Programme 2012-2022, it was found that there was a generally low planning monitoring and evaluation capacity in Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs).
“During a review assessment in the region, most expressed the need for extensive PM&E support and enhanced capabilities in this space at all levels. So RBM Training is responding to this gap” said Mrs. Kenilorea.
Meanwhile, Ministry of Health Planning and Policy Director Mr. Ivan Ghemu stated that the ministry of health position on the RBA training stemmed from the need to track progress or non-progress of our health responses to ensure our health indicators, but particularly of indicators relating to our women and young girls in the country. For the Minister, there is a demand for sound and holistic understanding and practice of RBM to guide planning, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation processes.
“The need to train managers on RBM at all level within the health sector was evident and surfaced after the completion the Health Facility Readiness and Services Availability Assessment (HFRSA) in 2020/2021, as staff are needed to capacitate and track progress of integrated services as aligned to the Role Delineation Policy”, said Mr. Ghemu.
He added Solomon Islands is a data-rich country with varying database in place, however, our challenge is the interpretation and application of evidence to make sound decisions and planning.
“With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic across the region, including Solomon Islands early this year, our focus on critical areas surrounding reproductive, maternal, adolescent health and GBV have been shifted, resulted in stalling program activities and lower target coverage.
“However, our strength lies in the partnership with our strategic partners and stakeholders supporting not only the MHMS but also other government ministries to address and achieve the objectives to ensure we work towards the achievement of universal health coverage. Our challenge is synergizing of all these support as each of these agencies comes with their own funding systems, process, requirements and interest”, said Ghemu.
He added, therefore, this training is crucial to enhance the participants’ understanding and knowledge to have the ability to utilize the availability evidence in their work place for the application of synergizing planning and budgeting, implementing and tracking progress of critical country’s health indicators.
He acknowledged the DCGA national strategic policy and health priorities relates to the training and thank UNFPA Pacific as the major executing UN Agency to this training, the Australian Government as the financier, and partners ministries and stakeholder who attended the training, especially the MHMS Training and Research Team who assisted UNFPA country office in the facilitation of the training.
-MHMS Press
