23rd October, 2015
At least 90 heads of tertiary and secondary hospitals will converge on Abuja and Calabar to strategize on ways to improve the quality of HIV care and treatment services, a statement said.
The statement, issued by the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN), said discussion at the meetings would focus on the role of hospital leadership and management in clinical governance.
The statement was signed by Mr. Dennis Mordi, the Communications Manager of the institute, and made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
It said the meetings would discuss ways to ensure smooth service delivery to people living with HIV and with other ailments.
According to the statement, the meeting will attract Chief Medical Directors and Medical Directors from Plateau, Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Niger, Edo, Enugu and Akwa Ibom states.
Others are Cross River, Oyo, Rivers, Ogun and Lagos states and the Federal Capital Territory.
It will also attract the leadership of the Federal Ministry of Health, the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), U.S. Government (USG) and other relevant agencies.
The statement said that meeting is being organised by the University of Maryland’s Nigerian Alliance for Health Systems Strengthening (NAHSS) project in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Health.
“It will be a consultative forum to deliberate on ways to maximize the benefits of adopting and maintaining a structured quality management process in hospitals,” the statement said.
The NAHSS Project Director, Mrs. Chinenye Ugoji, said in the statement that the meeting would “highlight the need to create an environment that fosters innovation, supports quality improvement and promotes excellence’’.
“The engagement of leadership of hospitals and government in delivery of high quality patient care and clinic processes is pivotal to building a sustainable culture of high standards in Nigeria’s health care system,’’ Ugoji was quoted as saying.
According to the statement, the first batch of hospital heads, chief medical directors from 29 tertiary hospitals will meet at Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja, on Monday.
It said that another 30 medical directors from secondary hospitals from eight southern states would also meet at Transcorp Hotel, Calabar, on Oct. 29 even as another set of 30 medical directors from six northern states had met at Ibeto Hotel, Abuja, on Thursday.
It said that since 2012, the NAHSS project, with funding from U.S. Government, has partnered with the Federal Ministry of Health, State Ministries of Health, the Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria and other Implementing partners (IPs).
The statement said the project is designed to develop and implement the expanded nationally standardized quality management programme called `NigeriaQual’.
Notable milestones achieved so far include the development and approval of guidelines and protocols to guide activities of the different programmes, periodic performance measurement surveys on key health indicators and the effective dissemination of the results from such surveys through multiple media, to guide decision making, it said.