Through our work at Weill Bugando over the last four years, we have learned that we cannot properly scale up health worker training without resolving deep-rooted issues in the health system within which workers are being trained.
In response to this challenge we designed the Lake Zone Initiative (LZI) to identify and develop cost-effective strategies to address major operational bottlenecks, such as drug delivery and patient transport, that impede more effective delivery of care in the six regions that feed into Weill Bugando. The total population of the six regions that make up the Lake Zone – Mwanza, Shinyanga, Mara, Tabora, Kigoma and Kagera – is close to 13 million people, about one-third of Tanzania’s overall population.
Working in partnership with the Tanzanian government, Weill Bugando leadership, private corporations and other NGOs, over the next five years we will selectively develop system elements needed for the Lake Zone to achieve improved access for patients in financially sustainable ways, such as:
- Staff deployment, retention, and productivity
- Facility and system-wide performance management
- Access to quality primary care
- Referral issues
- Supply chain management for drugs and materials
- Communication and networking between clinical staff and facilities
- Sustainable financing
We will conduct the LZI in three phases: a six-month assessment phase starting in 2008 to develop a portfolio of high-potential initiatives; an operational phase to develop work plans, budgets, and implementation roles among partners at the blueprint level of detail; and an execution phase starting in 2009 to jointly implement select strategies with our partners.
Coalition
Our approach is to inform policies, gather resources, and catalyze actions and investments by others.
With this in mind, we are building a coalition that will embark on a large-scale, multi-year partnership among stakeholders from multiple sectors, such as the Tanzanian government, local communities, businesses, international agencies, academic institutions and NGOs, to carry out implementation. This partnership exemplifies a new approach to global problem solving by breaking down traditional boundaries between business, civil society, and academia to create hybrid solutions that draw on the best each domain has to offer. We view this partnership as a prototype for discovering how to strengthen health systems and acquiring knowledge so it can be replicated elsewhere
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