Improving quality of care for better health outcomes in Somaliland

The project builds on a successful pilot in which KGHP, in partnership with the Somaliland Ministry of Health Development (MoHD) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) started the development of a national strategy to improve the quality of healthcare and tested the use of the WHO tools to improve the quality of health service delivery across 10 facilities in Awdal region.  

The new programme will scale up the approach to all six regional hospitals and work at multiple levels of the health system to bring about sustainable changes to the quality of care.

Supporting the government to develop a national quality policy and People’s Voice Survey 

The MoHD will be supported by KGHP and WHO to develop a National Quality Policy and Strategy (NQPS), that will set the strategic direction for the MoHD to address quality at all levels of the health system. A national Technical Working Group will be established to oversee the development of the strategy and its implementation.

Working with the Quality Evidence for Health System Transformation (QuEST) network, the project will support the MoHD to conduct a People’s Voice Survey. The nationally representative survey – which is the first of its kind in Somaliland – will focus on population health needs and seek to understand Somalilanders’ perspectives on processes of care and confidence in the health care system which serves them. It will enable rapid assessment of health system performance from the population's perspective to inform health system planning.

Quality improvement in regional hospitals

The programme will work directly with all six regional hospitals. Recognising the diverse range of quality challenges facilities are facing, we will prioritise improvements to infection prevention control (IPC) and build staff capacity in quality improvement methods so they can apply them to other areas. We will establish quality improvement and IPC committees in facilities, strengthen policies and guidelines on IPC, deliver a broad training programme on IPC with staff at all levels of the hospital, from directors, to doctors, nurses, cleaners and administrators. Quality Improvement Committees will be supported to design, monitor and scale-up quality improvement initiatives for their facilities. 

New national curriculum for undergraduate medicine

The programme also aims to strengthen the health workforce by collaborating with universities across Somaliland. Medical schools will be supported to transition to the new national curriculum for undergraduate medicine, developed under our previous Prepared for Practice project. As a result, more doctors will enter the health system having studied a set of standard subjects which were tailored to the country’s health needs and meet international standards. We will work with the MoHD and National Health Professions Commission to map the current provision of postgraduate education for health subjects and determine the need for postgraduate specialists based on population health needs. This component of the project is being delivered in partnership with Tropical Health Education Trust (THET).

Get involved

We are currently recruiting expert volunteers in Infection Prevention Control and Quality Improvement healthcare projects to support this programme of work. To learn more and apply, please follow the link here.

This project is made possible with generous funding from Qatar Charity.