Deputy Director -HIV at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr Peter Ehrenkranz visits Zambia.
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The Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) and the Zambian Government through the Ministry of Health (MOH) welcomed Dr Peter Ehrenkranz who was in the country on a 2-day working visit.
During a courtesy call paid to the Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health, Professor Luckson Kasonka praised the cooperation between MOH and CIDRZ, and encouraged the Foundation not to relent in their support to improve the quality of care in Zambia.
Prof Kasonka thanked the Foundation for their continued support to Zambia and more recently for their support on the just completed Person Centred Care for HIV in Zambia (PCC) study.
PCC is a health system intervention that uses quality improvement cycles to enhance patient experience and increase access to HIV care.
The team held several talks with the Ministry centred around Zambia’s priority areas in improving care, where quality improvement fits into the national plan and how the PCC study could be scaled up nationally.
Further, the delegation visited the Lusaka Provincial Health Office to introduce Dr. Peter Ehrenkranz who paid a curtesy call to the Provincial Health Director (PHD), Dr. Consity Mwale. The PHD and his team presented the challenges faced in retaining some patients in HIV care in the 192 health facilities across Lusaka Province. They described how they thought the PCC approach could be used to enhance the ability of the health system to provide personalised care to ensure patients remain in care.
Dr Mwale’s team further highlighted gaps in training of Health Care Workers (HCW) in the administration of family planning services and that for programmes to be sustainable, HCW need to be trained to be more patient centred.
And Dr. Ehrenkranz expressed interest in learning how the Foundation can continue to collaborate with the Provincial Health Office in various areas such as integration of chronic disease management and family planning with HIV care.
“We would like to discuss how Patient Centered Care (PCC) could be scaled up nationally and the current gaps in funding support to make this a reality”, said Dr. Ehrenkranz
